San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Tell the twin stories of Uvalde
The day will come when a permanent public memorial stands in Uvalde to mark what happened there May 24, a date shrouded in the same grief that cloaks the other heart-shattering dates of the largest mass shootings at American schools — 13 killed in Littleton, Colo., in 1999; 26 killed in Newtown, Conn., in 2012; 10 killed Santa Fe in 2018; 17 killed in Parkland, Fla. in 2018.
That grief and the crime from which it came will be memorialized as they are in other mass shootings — eight in the past 13 years in Texas — and the other awful dates in our nation’s history: the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.
Far away, still, is the time when the generations visiting that Uvalde memorial are long removed from the pain of the day, generations of those who did not experience the immediate shock of the crime, did not see the death toll rise from two children to 19 children and two teachers.
That public memorial of the future will house many of the items that made up the two memorials that took root at the school and its Town Square, transforming them into fields of flowers, crosses, stuffed animals, candles, artwork and letters.
Such public memorials are sacred grounds, affirming that the people who perished there were loved, and that how and why they died matter. Public memorials honor the dead and tell stories for the living.
On Tuesday, the Austin AmericanStatesman and news station KVUE published a leaked 82-minute video that is, and will remain, essential to any story told about the Uvalde shooting and its aftermath. Substantively and symbolically, the video defines what went wrong in Uvalde on May 24 and has continued to go wrong since.
The video shows heavily armed police waiting in the hallway of Robb Elementary for more than an hour before confronting and killing the 18year-old, who was shooting and killing during that time.
The video’s content and the controversy surrounding its release graphically showcase that any future public memorial celebrating and remembering the lives of the precious 21 souls lost will also document the failure, incompetence, deceit and callousness of elected and law enforcement officials, and the additional pain with which they’ve burdened grieving families.
In a May 27 press conference, Uvalde became different from every other American mass shooting when we learned how long the police waited as lives were lost. Gained through survivor’s accounts and 911 calls, the knowledge of what went on in Rooms 111 and 112 will haunt us in ways unlike any other mass shooting. Since that day, in a contest of who will take the least accountability, officials have sullied themselves by lying, finger-pointing, hiding, obfuscating and dragging their feet, all while offering stale platitudes to the families.
On Tuesday, seven weeks after the shooting, the Uvalde families were told by a Texas House committee investigating the response they would get a first look at the video this weekend. But hours later, the leaked release of the video caught the families off-guard. Their anger was on display at that evening’s City Council meeting.
The families also were upset that the memorial in the Town Square had been taken down. City officials said items not wanted by the family would be used in a future memorial.
The future memorial will honor the lives stolen from Uvalde and the world, and it will tell the stories of their 21 abbreviated lives. But also enshrined in the public story will be the failure of public officials who have disgraced themselves from May 24 onward.
They’ve not alleviated the pain of grieving families. They’ve contributed.
A future memorial will honor the lives stolen, but it also will tell of failure and disgrace