Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Virginia Tech

Poet and professor Nikki Giovanni was at today’s memorial service

“We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. WE are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant in the killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech. "

1 comment:

megan said...

i still just can't seem to get past the pain from these shootings. 2 things that keep popping up that scare me out o'all the discussions.

1) why are we making this a issue of nationality rather than what is wrong with our society? yes cho came from an immigrant family, but that isn't the heart of the issue.

2) i've heard the line "if every student had had a gun, this wouldn't have happened." making every student a potential shooter is absolutely not going to work.

i see the 2 linked. the us is at risk of only being able to operate out of fear, fear for the other while othering "us."

divide and conquer....hm.