Nelba, a therapist for troubled youth, now runs the Ana Grace Project, which trains teachers and schools how to reduce social isolation and create safe and welcoming communities for students. At the start of the school year following the shooting, Nelba wrote an open letter to the teachers in their district. “When you Google ‘hero,’ there should be a picture of a principal, a school lunch worker, a custodian, a reading specialist, a teacher, or a bus monitor,” she wrote. “Real heroes don’t wear capes. They work in America’s schools.”
One of those heroes was Dawn Hochsprung, the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary. When Dawn heard the gun shots, she raced into the hallway. She saw the gunman and lunged at him to knock the weapon out of his hands. She died trying to protect her students.
During the campaign, I met Dawn’s grown daughter, Erica Smegielski. When she died, Dawn had been helping Erica plan her summer wedding. Erica couldn’t imagine walking down the aisle without her mom. But slowly she pieced her life back together and managed to have a joyous wedding celebration. Then Erica went to work at Everytown for Gun Safety, Mike Bloomberg’s organization that advocates for commonsense gun laws. Erica threw herself into my campaign, speaking all over the country and telling her story in a powerful television ad. She once told me that I reminded her of Dawn. It’s a compliment I’ll never forget.
As hard as the politics of guns are, and as divided as the country feels, we’ve got to do better. The NRA can spend all it wants. Donald Trump can pal around with Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who has called the Sandy Hook massacre a hoax. What a despicable lie. They’re on the wrong side of justice, history, basic human decency. And it’s because of the Sandy Hook parents, the Mothers of the Movement, Gabby and Mark, and so many other incredibly brave survivors and family members that I know in my heart that one day we will stem the tide and save lives.
I think about something I heard Erica say during the campaign. She was explaining how she picked herself up after the loss of her mother and decided to devote her life to gun safety. “What if everyone who faced tough odds said, ‘It’s hard, so I’m going to walk away’?” she asked. “That’s not the type of world I want to live in.”
Me neither, Erica
IDEALISM AND REALISM
Change Makers
Service is the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.
One of the most persistent challenges I faced as a candidate was being perceived as a defender of the status quo, while my opponents in the primaries and the general election seized the sought-after mantle of “change.” The same thing happened to me in 2008. I never could figure out how to shake it.
Change might be the most powerful word in American politics. It’s also one of the hardest to define. In 1992 and 2008, change meant electing dynamic young leaders who promised hope and renewal. In 2016, it meant handing a lit match to a pyromaniac.
The yearning for change springs from deep in the character of our restless, questing, constantly-reinventing-itself country. That’s part of what makes America great. But we don’t always spend enough time thinking about what it takes to actually make the change we seek. Change is hard. That’s one reason we’re sometimes taken in by leaders who make it sound easy but don’t have any idea how to get anything done. Too often we fail to think big enough or act fast enough and let opportunities for change slip away. Or we don’t have the patience to see things through.
I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a change maker for most of my life. My journey took me from student-activist to citizen-advocate to politician–policy maker. Along the way, I never stopped searching for the right balance of idealism and realism. Sometimes I had to make painful compromises. But I’ve also had the great privilege of meeting people whose lives were healthier, freer, and fuller because of my work. Today, despite losing in 2016, I am more convinced than ever that driving progress in a big, raucous democracy like ours requires a mix of principle and pragmatism—plus a whole lot of persistence.
Nobody did more to help me understand this than Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund and my first boss. When I met her in the spring of 1970, her accomplishments were already stunning. She was the first black woman to pass the bar exam in Mississippi, after having graduated from Yale Law School in 1963. She became a civil rights lawyer for the NAACP in Jackson and established a Head Start program for poor kids who desperately needed it. Marian worked with Dr. King and opened Bobby Kennedy’s eyes to the reality of poverty in America by taking him to tiny shacks in the Mississippi Delta and introducing him to children so hungry they were nearly catatonic.
Marian showed me what it takes to make real and lasting change. She gave me my start as an activist, held me to account as I grew into a national leader, and was there for me when things fell apart as a candidate.
I was in my early twenties when I met Marian, but I’d already spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to be an effective activist.
My parents—especially my mother—raised me and my brothers in the Methodist tradition of “faith in action.” At church, we were taught to be “doers of the word, not hearers only.” That meant stepping outside the pews, rolling up our sleeves, and doing “all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can.” That credo, attributed to the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, inspired generations of Methodists to volunteer in hospitals, schools, and slums. For me, growing up in a comfortable middle-class suburb, it provided a sense of purpose and direction, pointing me toward a life of public service.
My activist faith was sharpened by the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. In college and law school, my friends and I spent many long nights debating the morality and efficacy of civil disobedience, dodging the draft, and other forms of resistance. What would it take to end an unjust war in Vietnam, expand civil rights and women’s rights, and combat poverty and injustice? Should our goal be reform or revolution? Consensus or conflict? Should we protest or participate?
The “Left,” of which we considered ourselves a part, was divided. Radicals talked about revolution and believed conflict was the only way to drive change. Not surprisingly, I agreed more with the liberals who argued that the system had to be reformed from the inside. Partly it was a question of temperament—I’m a pragmatist by both nature and nurture—but I was also watching and learning as events swirled around me.
At Wellesley, I tried to find ways to push the college toward more progressive positions through negotiation rather than disruption. I ran for student government president in 1968 because I thought I could do a good job convincing college administrators to make changes that students wanted. My platform included adding students to faculty committees, recruiting more students and faculty of color, opening up the curriculum, and easing curfews and other social restrictions. I won and spent the next year trying to translate the demands of restive students into measurable change on campus.