July 6, 2025

a living monument of love

At least 21 children are dead in Texas, after severe flash flooding that took local and state officials by surprise.

Against this backdrop of tragedy, I keep thinking of political reality: the current administration’s 2026 budget proposal “seeks to eliminate all of NOAA’s weather and climate research labs along with institutes jointly run with universities around the country. The entire research division of NOAA would be eliminated under the proposal, which is subject to congressional approval.” (CNN)

Children die, children keep dying, here and everywhere. So many preventable deaths.

In 2025 if you say out loud that children shouldn’t be dying because of hunger, because of disaster, because of disease, because of war, because of cuts to infrastructure and personnel, someone will find a way to tell you that you’re taking an unacceptably political position and how very dare you.

I maintain that it is a fact, and a tragedy, that children are dying because adults in positions of power and authority have decided that they are expendable, insignificant, disposable. It is an indictment of us all.

Attribution

Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
Your are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
— from Kids Who Die by Langston Hughes