10 Years Later: My Time in Newtown and Reflections on Our Society
Ten years ago last week, a gunman killed twenty first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. The massacre shook the nation. Just weeks later, I was called into Newtown to help the community move forward, from trauma and despair to healing and hope.
Since then, school shootings have become so common that kids report imagining how they’d react if it happened to them. I have two children of my own; no child or parent, anywhere, anytime, should have to imagine such tragedy.
The U.S. has more guns on the street than any other nation, with gun violence on the rise. In the last five years, the U.S. has had more mass shootings than any other comparable time span dating back to 1966. What’s going on? What should we be thinking about—and doing?
Most Americans from all walks of life and across the political spectrum agree we need sensible gun reform. Let’s build on this common ground and get it done. But there is something else we must tackle. Something essential and profound to us all. It's time we contemplate what kind of society we are creating—and how.
For thirty-five years, I’ve traveled the country, listening deeply to the questions people are wrestling with and working with communities to address their challenges and reach their shared aspirations. I’ve been recruited to solve some of the most difficult problems of our time, including the harrowing experience of working with the grieving, and brave, people of Newtown.
Over and over again, what I hear is not simply the noise and acrimony and fear and mistrust that is being generated by people who have hijacked our public square. Who gave them the mandate to inflict such corrosive damage on our lives and society? We must push back. We must. So, I urge you to listen closely. Beneath all the noise, you can hear people expressing what really matters to them. And it sounds startlingly similar all across our country.
Today, in so many ways, our sense of connection to each other is badly frayed. An epidemic of loneliness troubles us. There is a growing mental health crisis. Our ugly politics plays on our differences and breeds conflict, and with it a flight or fight response. Disparities are growing—not shrinking—making it nearly impossible for everyone to get a fair shot at a hopeful future. More and more families have loved ones in the grips of opioid, meth and fentanyl addiction. Just weeks ago, in a nation increasingly armed with hateful views, a gunman opened fire in an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub.
These challenges signal that something is deeply off in our society. Let’s be clear: people are crying out for support, empathy, and connection. We all long for a sense of belonging. It’s human.
Last month, ten years after the Sandy Hook massacre, Newtown unveiled a memorial. Perhaps you noticed that there was no formal ceremony. No celebration of any kind. Instead, it was a silent marking of the inexplicable, and an urgent hastening to engage our collective memory so that we can move forward in a renewed way.
From traveling the country during this troubling time of division and bitterness, I know first-hand—as you do—people are searching to find practical ways to make a better society. To do so, we must face this reality: There is no single answer to ending mass shootings. There is no miracle cure. More forums and talk are not the solution.
It’s time: we must choose to muster our collective will and courage and, yes, our humility, to work together on these underlying conditions—to actively rebuild our civic fabric and sense of shared responsibility. I know we can do this because I witness people taking effective action in communities each and every day.
My time in Newtown is something I will never forget. Let us all never forget: our task is to build a more fair, just, inclusive, and hopeful future for everyone. It’s time.
