Glennon Doyle Shares Gut-wrenching Text From Daughter During Lockdown Drill
‘I am ashamed our country is so weak we make our children and teachers hide behind barricaded doors’
Lockdown drills are, unfortunately, basically built into our kids’ curriculum at school. No matter how young or old they are, students all across the U.S. have likely endured their fair share of terrifying drills to “prepare” for a potential mass shooting. Best-selling author and activist Glennon Doyle shares the heartbreaking reality for so many kids and parents in her latest Instagram post.
Doyle, who’s no stranger to mobilizing people in the name of causes that help children, shared the exchange between herself and her middle-school-aged daughter, who was texting her mom to let her know she had to endure “code red” drills at school all day that day. During every single class, she and her classmates were forced to barricade themselves in their classrooms and hide as part of the drill.
Doyle understandably asks her daughter if she’s alright and if she needs her mom to come and get her. As many of us would do — because even though the intent behind these drills is to prevent harm and trauma, the drills themselves can be very traumatic for anyone who participates in them.
https://www.instagram.com/glennondoyle/p/BveOjSMBB-D/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=gx1wgcan7fml
After her daughter affirms that she’s okay, Doyle took to Instagram to share her thoughts on the matter. Doyle has an enormous platform, and she constantly uses it to bring awareness to issues that are affecting, women, children, and families everywhere.
“I just want to say this: I am ashamed that our country is so weak that we make our children and teachers hide behind barricaded classroom doors,” Doyle writes. “I am furious that our lawmakers are so corrupt that instead of protecting America’s children- they leave them to try to protect themselves.”
She’s 100% valid in her fury here. Because it is absolute bullshit that our politicians are more concerned about following the money trail with the NRA than coming up with actionable solutions to the gun violence crisis that has swept our nation.
“I am disgusted that my middle school daughter will spend her day hiding so that lawmakers can continue to hide behind the NRA,” she continues. “I am disgusted that in this country we love our automatic weapons more than our children.”
What’s even more infuriating is thinking about how the survivors of Parkland, Orlando, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, and countless others must feel in the wake of the mass shooting in New Zealand. Because it took less than 24 hours for their leader, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, to call for gun control. It took less than a week after the shooting in Christchurch for semi-automatic weapons to be banned within the country. And in all the years we’ve suffered through countless mass shootings in the U.S. — nothing. Nothing has changed.
Doyle rightly points out that our children — the very people who this violence directly affects the most — are watching. They’re living through these drills and this unspeakably cruel reality. And because we failed them politically, they’ll be the ones who bear the burden of inciting change. “They will grow up and they will vote all of you NRA puppets the hell out,” Doyle writes.
She concludes her post with a powerful statement that will give you goosebumps: “Land of the free and home of the brave? Bullshit. While our children practice shielding their friends’ bodies from bullets? They are not free because lawmakers are not brave,” she says. “That’s all I’ve got for today.”
