We have somehow become a nation where anyone with an underdeveloped sense of social responsibility and inadequate self-preservation instincts has the disruptive power of a cartoon supervillian, a temptation that’s obviously too tempting to too many people.
On Tuesday, when a bomb threat shut Los Angeles public schools, and many private schools like the one my son attends, one of the moms I know said she hoped the threat wasn’t an actual warning but was just a dumb student trying to delay finals – a scenario that, if we’re honest, many parents can too easily imagine. After all, adolescents are known for having underdeveloped senses of responsibility and poor self-preservation instincts, and the short-sighted and insensitive “jokes” of adolescence are familiar to many of us.
But most kids know nowadays that phoning in a bomb threat is a bridge too far. They’ve learned that the hard way, by seeing too many school shootings on the one hand and being subject to too many “zero tolerance” rules on the other.
This brave new reality affects American parents too. Our “responsibilities” have come to include the need for backup plans in case of terrorist threats, school lockdowns, and – god forbid – actual mass violence. Locally, along with the Los Angeles Unified School District threat, already this week two schools in nearby Manhattan Beach were closed due to a different series of threats (three in a week, reportedly), along with San Bernardino Valley College.
We’ve reached the limits of American individualism. It’s time for the adults to step up to the plate and start figuring out intelligent solutions that balance a need for security with the reality that daily life can’t be subject to constant trollish disruptions, let alone frequent mass shootings and other forms of everyday violence. Maybe, hopefully, in the midst of all this madness we might rediscover the importance of collective social responsibility.
Parents, especially parents who are living at the limits of their own time and resources, know that this nation’s collective sense of social responsibility is underdeveloped, when it comes to underfunded and overstretched public services, or to fundamental public goods like education and childcare, physical and mental health services, public transportation and communication infrastructure.
Add in our valorization of the “individual right to bear arms” at the expense of the collective right to feel safe in schools, workplaces, movie theaters, shopping malls and streets, and the way that gun violence in some communities seems only to provide those charged to serve and protect with an excuse to treat citizens committing minor infractions as homicidal brutes, and it can feel like we’re approaching the outer limit of what a democratic society can withstand.
But on Tuesday, I saw evidence for hope, too; one of the paradoxical effects of a crisis is often the way it can bring people together and make us more aware of our interdependence.
The moms I know sometimes talk about our “village”: the network of friends, colleagues and acquaintances who help us live up to our disparate responsibilities. One of the things parents learn is that raising children requires a broad social safety net. Feminists and social scientists, too, know that the limits of a society’s institutions are felt most acutely where children are involved.
So for instance, one of the first things many people seemed to realize this morning was how impossible the situation was for thousands of working parents. Steve Zimmer, the LAUSD board president, publicly asked for employers’ understanding and called on the “cooperation of the whole of Los Angeles today”. After all, two weeks before Christmas is a particularly busy time for parents, especially parents who are hourly wage employees: traditional wage workers like delivery drivers, post office employees, waiters, retail and stockroom workers and janitors and the new class of “gig economy” workers and freelancers.
And on my kids’ school Facebook page, a few moms and a dad posted phone numbers offering to watch kids whose parents needed to get to work, including siblings who attend public schools. My coworkers and cancelled appointments were completely understanding, without exception. LA Metro announced that students would ride free to get home or somewhere safe.
If we look to our villages, we find hope.
