WASHINGTON — Velma Duran took an aisle seat three rows from the back of the airliner, gripping a silver rosary and praying. Each bead was heart shaped. She got through half of it before takeoff.
She dreaded getting on a plane — had never done it before and never wanted to. But she was tired of waiting for the healing to be over to do something.
Irma was one of two teachers and 19 children massacred in their fourth-grade classrooms at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School on May 24. Joe died two days later of a heart attack — or as many say now, of a broken heart.
Once in the air, Duran relaxed slightly. She pulled down her tray table and opened a bound copy of the Texas House committee report on the shooting. A yellow highlighter in hand, she began to read it for the first time.
“It’s been over six months. They all said wait, it’s a process, let yourself heal, but I didn’t think it would take this long,” Duran, 51, an elementary school teacher in San Antonio’s North East Independent School District, said later that night in a restaurant attached to a Holiday Inn outside Washington.
“It’s December. Irma’s birthday is Dec. 11,” she said. “It’s like their mother’s death is in vain. Nothing is done. Sometimes I feel like it’s roadkill. People move on like nothing’s happened. It pisses me off.”
Duran was talking about Joe and Irma Garcia’s kids, most of whom were among more than 50 Uvaldeans who flew from San Antonio to the nation’s capital to protest gun violence and urge senators to enact an assault weapons ban before Congress adjourns for the year.
Most had spent months demanding far narrower gun law reforms from Texas lawmakers and working to change their town’s power structure, only to be crushed by Nov. 8 election results locally and statewide.
The trip to Washington was an even longer shot, paid for by a nonprofit, March Fourth, created in response to the July 4 shooting in Highland Park, Ill. The bill they were fighting for doesn’t have the 60 votes needed for it to pass the Senate and is unlikely to be revived next session, when Republicans control the House.
The Uvalde group said the visit still gave them an opportunity to remind the country that they weren’t going to stop lobbying for gun legislation. And they were meeting families from across the country who had lived through a similar horror.
“It feels helpless. Out of control. Like there was nothing you could do,” said Lucinda Nevarez, a cousin of Duran. “But I could do this. In every other way, so much power was taken from us. In how the families have been treated. When you feel so hurt and so powerless, this is what you can do.”
It was wet and cold as the group boarded a charter bus Tuesday afternoon. They didn’t recognize the couple already on board, Patience and Alex Murray.
Sam Owens, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer
Patience Murray was shot twice at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in 2016. One bullet shattered her femur. Alex Murray’s 18-year-old sister was among the 49 killed that night.
“I understand there are so many after-effects, physically and emotionally, that happen when gun violence and tragedy strikes,” Patience Murray said as the bus approached the Lincoln Memorial. “Just being with the other families and being physically present to support and be a part of what is going on is really important.
“Because we know that journey is never-ending.”
Mixed feelings on guns
The Murrays wanted to be here to let the Uvalde families know they aren’t alone — and that sometimes they’ll need a break.
“I think some people who experienced gun violence who show up for these things are afraid to say they feel drained, that they feel burned out, from not seeing any change,” Murray said.
Most in the group had never been to Washington. They ran up the monument’s marble stairs, proud of the images on their T-shirts, looking at the reflecting pool stretching toward the Washington Monument. Some of the younger ones remarked about how cold it was.
“It’s a hard-fought battle, if I’m going to be completely honest,” Angel Garza, who lost his step-daughter, Amerie, 10, in the shooting, said of the gun restrictions he was there to lobby for. “I am 100 percent for a total ban, but I don’t think we will be able to push that for the whole country.”
“It’s so hard to get people to let go of something that they’re so attached to, but we are humans, and we are reasonable, so we should be able to come to a reasonable agreement when it comes to this,” Garza said.
The day his dad died, Cristian Garcia, at 24 the oldest son of Irma and Joe Garcia, received an email that he had been accepted to the U.S. Border Patrol. He’s putting it on hold, focused on taking care of his two younger sisters and not on activism.
“Sometimes you are a brother, a single parent and you are a mom and a dad, and it is a lot of titles to figure out who you are,” he said. “I just wanted to come here to show my support. It is a crazy thing to happen. I still every now and then can’t believe they are gone. I’m coming home from Walmart and they aren’t going to be there? It hits me in different ways.”
Garcia doesn’t think banning guns will keep schools safe. Fortifying campuses makes more sense to him. But despite being skeptical about the specific demand of the protest, he was glad he made the trip.
“This tore a lot of families apart. In the outcome, all of us, we became a much more, bigger family,” he said. “And you get to know them, get to know their kids. It’s a beautiful thing.”
READ MORE: Uvalde shooting spawned lots of activism — then it splintered
Pelted by rain, the group walked in silence to the Capitol under bobbing umbrellas and signs that read, “Assault weapons took my Best Friends,” “Assault weapons took my Little Sister,” “Assault weapons took my Tia Irma,” and “Assault weapons took my Mom.”
Angel Garza gave a speech. Patience Murray recited a poem. Kitty Brandtner, the founder of March Fourth, said a few words.
“The tranquility took my breath away,” Duran said, reflecting on the event hours later. “I was expecting to be in pain being there, but it was majestic. It was overwhelming.”
Sam Owens, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer
“I feel like I shouldn’t be here. And I was enjoying it. It didn’t feel right,” Duran shook her head slightly, back and forth. “It’s a very confusing feeling.”
“I teach about the Washington Monument and now I’m here. (Irma Garcia) would’ve loved being here. The only thing I can do is place it in God’s hands. When you see everyone in a place like this, it does bring some fire. To me, it makes no sense why would you want assault weapons. I don’t get it.”
Out of the rain back in Union Station, families milled about. Among them was Carrie Drummond and Eric McGlinchey and their two kids, all of whom had been sitting near the shooter in Highland Park. None were injured but the trauma they endured inspired them to get involved with activist groups.
“The people we’ve met from Uvalde have been so warm and so welcoming,” Drummond said. “Their grief is pretty profound but for them to just welcome strangers into their circle is pretty amazing.”
They knew some of the Uvaldeans from March Fourth’s first protest in D.C. in July. The youngest, Calloum McGlinchey, 11, still texts with a Robb survivor he became friends with.
“They go through all the drills in their schools but not many other people in their school district have this touch point,” Eric McGlinchey said.
Halls of power
Most of the Uvalde group ate cheeseburgers and chicken wings back in their hotel late into the night, getting just a couple hours of sleep before heading to board an early flight back to San Antonio.
The Cazares and the Rubio families stayed to attend the Center for American Progress National Gun Violence Prevention Conference in the morning. They spent the afternoon with the Newtown Action Alliance Foundation, networking with more families. The foundation has hosted a national vigil every year since 2013, after the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Connecticut killed 28 people.
The Cazares family lost Jackie, 10, at Robb Elementary. The Rubios lost Lexi, 10. They joined hundreds of gun violence survivors for a lunch at St. Marks Episcopal Church, a block behind the Library of Congress.
Tear-streaked speakers described how their lives had changed forever. Javier, Gloria and Jazmin Cazares peered into the room from a doorway but the emotional weight of the stories became too much. They rested on a bench outside. Kimberly Mata-Rubio took refuge in the church’s basement library.
No one wanted to leave, because the U.S. Secret Service process to get inside had been extensive. President Joe Biden was coming, the first president to attend the annual event.
There was a familiar face at St. Marks — Sandy Phillips, a mom from San Antonio who lost her daughter in the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting in 2012. She had reached out to the Uvaldeans early on.
“In their cases, that pain and devastation is so much worse than it would be in other situations,” Phillips said about the lackluster police response at Robb Elementary. “All of that is just another layer of extreme trauma for these people. … It is amazing that any of them are standing.”
The most strenuous activists can burn out, Phillips warned. Activism can help healing but it has to be balanced with other kinds of self-care, “especially for people who know they have this moment in time where their voices are really loud, really proud and really important, and they are using it for all it’s worth,” she said.
They should also be saying, “I can’t do it this week,” Phillips said.
Sam Owens, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer
“We survivors get very good at wearing masks in a social situation and putting on what we think we need to put on at that moment. And some of us get so good at it we don’t know how to take it off,” she said. “This unfortunately won’t be solved overnight. It hasn’t been solved in 10 years, and we’ve been working on it every single day.”
At 7 p.m. hundreds of people filled the red-brick church. TV crews and reporters huddled in the back.
A procession of white-shrouded members of Gays Against Guns was followed by a children’s choir, then remarks from survivors and politicians, including Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers.
The otherwise somber audience erupted in cheers and chants when Florida Democrat Maxwell Frost, the first Gen-Z congressman-elect, gave a passionate speech.
Towards the end of the night, Kimberly Mata-Rubio and Jazmin Cazares urged senators to ban the kind of high-velocity weapon that killed their daughter and sister.
“Coming together in this way is beautiful and the relationships that have been formed out of this tragedy are very bittersweet,” Cazares said. “We shouldn’t have to be here but since we are, I’m thankful that these are the people we are surrounded by.”
It was after 10 p.m. when they walked in search of a restaurant that was still open. A survivor from last year’s Oxford High School shooting in Michigan approached Cazares and they embraced. They had met this year at an event in Austin.
Over calamari, pasta and Dos Equis beer, the Rubio and Cazares families talked about what parts of the vigil were the saddest and how hard it was to keep still on stage for hours.
They paused as the TV behind them aired MSNBC’s vigil coverage. But when the screen zoomed in on Biden and their faces were no longer visible, they laughed and turned back to their food.
claire.bryan@express-news.net
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