Cloture Motion
Floor Speech
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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about a tragedy that happened in Richmond a couple of days ago at the Altria center, in the heart of our city, when gun violence erupted right at the end of the graduation ceremony for the 2023 graduating class of Huguenot High School.
Two people were killed: a Huguenot High School graduate, Shawn Jackson, and his stepfather, Renzo Smith. It is a tragedy that is really having a deep, deep impact in my community.
I wanted to rise to speak about those who were killed and those who were injured, trampled in the pandemonium, the Huguenot High School community, the Richmond Public Schools community. The Altria center is a beautiful entertainment and event venue on Monroe Park in downtown Richmond. It was built in the 1920s and was built in the Moorish architectural style and was given the name of the ``Mosque,'' and it was called the Mosque for a very long time.
I was elected to the Richmond City Council in 1994, and members of our Muslim community came to the Richmond City Council and said: We understand that this building has a particular architectural style. And we understand it may even be sort of a tribute to us to call this building a mosque, but it is not a mosque; it is an entertainment venue. There is alcohol served. There is dancing and other things that wouldn't be appropriate. And our Muslim community asked, in a very respectful way: Can you come up with a different name for this facility? It was in my city council district, and we acted to change the name of this facility to the Landmark. And then a number of years later, Altria, a company headquartered in Richmond, agreed to help renovate the facility, after nearly 100 years, and bring it to more 21st century use, and the name is now the Altria Theater.
I spend some time talking about this place because, Mr. President, I imagine you have places like this in Hawaii. These are places where everybody has gone for their entire lives for events like high school graduation. Virtually every public high school in Richmond and many of the private high schools in Richmond and the surrounding community, you go to a graduation, and it is at the Altria Theater.
Of my three children, two of them graduated and walked across that stage at the Altria Theater. As a mayor and then-Governor and now Senator, I have spoken at many graduations right there on that stage at the Altria Theater. My wife, a graduate of Richmond Public Schools, who was the Secretary of Education in Virginia and First Lady of Virginia, has also delivered graduation speeches right there. We have been to concerts there and theatrical performances there. We know this building in every last square centimeter, and we know what it is like when the Altria Theater is filled with a crowd of people.
High school graduation. I mean, think about it. I am 65 years old. Think about, over the course of a life, the happiest days of your life: high school graduation, college graduation, your wedding day, births of your children. I mean, over the course of a life, there are maybe 5 to 10 days that are universal experiences for American people where it will be in the top 5 to 10 happiest days of your life. High school graduation is that.
For Richmonders and people in the surrounding communities, you think high school graduation, the odds are, you are walking across the stage at that theater. These Huguenot High School graduates had walked across the stage. The young man, Mr. Jackson, had shaken the hand of Jason Kamras, the Richmond Public Schools principal, had received his congratulations. He was a young man who had done well in the classroom and had a lot of challenges--a lot of challenges--to get to that day.
Often a graduation is that. It is an opportunity to thank everybody who helped you, but it is also an opportunity to reflect upon the challenges that people have to get to that day. Back in the day, the grandparents would tell us how they used to have to walk 5 miles through the snow to get to school. That may not be the case anymore, but an awful lot of our kids have to do the equivalent-- the kind of psychic equivalent--of a 5-mile walk through the snow because they have to go through challenges. Whether they were homeless, whether they got a cancer diagnosis through school, they faced adversity and challenges.
Then they get to this day, and they are entitled--they are entitled-- to celebrate. That is what they were doing. Then, as they are exiting the Altria Theater, which is right near the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, and crossing the street to a beautiful park, Monroe Park, directly across, these gunshots break out, 20 shots in succession: families scrambling, knocking over people; vendors who were there, knocking over citizens; people scrambling in every direction. A young kid got pushed out onto the street and got hit by a vehicle. Thank goodness, she is going to be OK. Others sustained all kinds of minor injuries. Even those who were not injured, they will remember this and be scarred by it for the rest of their life because one of these four or five or six pivotal days in your life--the happiest days of your life--for them, will always be connected to seeing a classmate killed and seeing this happy day turned into an unspeakable tragedy.
I know how I think about my high school graduation. It was one of the happiest days of my life. Having been in that building, I know how the Huguenot community for the class of 2023 will remember their high school graduation day, and it is a tragedy that the memory is so polluted by this epidemic of gun violence.
Mr. President, I had the opportunity earlier this year--and I have spoken about it on the floor--to attend another school in Virginia, Richneck Elementary School in Newport News. On January 6, a 6-year-old brought a gun to school in a backpack. It was a student who had all kinds of difficult, difficult challenges. As his compassionate and brave teacher, Abby Zwerner, tried to deal with the situation, the student shot her. Thank God, she is recovering. Thank God, no one was killed that day.
But I had the opportunity to go down about 2 weeks after that to have an off-the-record, no press, no administrators discussion with parents and teachers at the school. The degree of trauma--the degree of trauma--of this happening and the degree of fear: ``Every day I go to work now, every day I go to work now, I am afraid this might happen.'' ``Every day I drop my child off in the morning, I drive away wondering whether I am going to get a call'' or ``I am going to get an emergency alert on my phone or if I pull up at the end of the day, am I going to be able to pick up my child and will my child be safe?''
My kids all went to the Richmond Public schools, the same schools that include Huguenot High School, and my youngest only graduated 10 years ago. But I will say, my wife and I, from pre-K to 12, in that 13 years for each of my three kids, never one day--never one day--never one day did we drop our kid off at school and worry about whether they would be safe at the end of the day.
The shooting at Sandy Hook happened right after my youngest child graduated from high school. There had been shootings at Columbine High School years and years ago. But the reality of my own children's public education in an urban school setting was we weren't worried about them.
But just 10 years later, what parent in this country who takes a child to school does not have a voice in their head with some worry about what might happen to them when they are there? Even if you live in a community where there has never been a school shooting, that fear is not absent from your mind because you have seen it happen in every region of the country. You have seen it happen in public schools. You have seen it happen in the Covenant Christian School in Nashville, in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges.
Maybe I am naive, but gun violence has been a reality of American life for a very long time. To me, it seemed, as a 65-year-old, that there have been some safe spaces. There have been some safe havens. There have been some refugees. There are none anymore. A church is not a refuge. A synagogue is not a refuge. A mosque is not a refuge. A school is not a refuge. An event space that is beloved by the entire community because everybody graduated from high school there for the last 100 years is not a refuge. A public park where you can gather to recreate with your family and friends is not a refuge. There is no refuge from this epidemic.
We talk about American exceptionalism. Often, when we do, we are talking about the things where we are exceptional in a positive way. It is important to acknowledge those things and be proud of them.
But there is an American exceptionalism to this, the degree of these mass shootings and the absence of any place--any place--that is a refuge is something that is exceptional about us in a way that is very, very painful.
As you know, because of my time in Central America, I have a particular connection with a lot of folks from the Americas who work here in the Capitol, and they often come up to me and we shoot the breeze and we talk in my somewhat limited Spanish about what is going on. And I had somebody, earlier in the year, after the shooting at the Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, come up to me and say: You know what--in Spanish--you know, El Salvador is one of the most dangerous countries in the world, but there aren't shootings in the schools.
The homicide rate may be higher than here, but there is a refuge. There is an understanding that you do not strip young people of their innocence and subject students and their families to the threat of gun violence every day.
We live in a country of no refuge, and I just wanted to take the floor to say to the family of Shawn Jackson and Lorenzo Smith, his stepfather--Shawn's mother has had to deal with both her husband and her son not just being taken away but taken away on the same day, on what was supposed to be the happiest day of their life. And she has been interviewed and talked about how hard it was for her son to get to this graduation and what a meaningful milestone in his life it was to be there on that day.
But the last thing that I would like to say is, it is easy to give up and be hopeless. I mean, I find, having been a mayor in Richmond when the homicide rate was the second highest in the United States and having been the Governor when the worst shooting in the United States happened at Virginia Tech, and how sad it is that I wish that would always be the worst shooting--it is a weird thing to say about your own State. But I hope there never would have been a tragedy that would have eclipsed 32 people being killed at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, and yet there have now been many tragedies that have claimed more victims than that, what had seemed like an unprecedented one.
It can seem hopeless. It can seem hopeless. I just want to say to students and families, especially to young people who are kind of trying to grapple with the reality of life in America circa 2023, and they are seeing skies that look apocalyptic outside because of climate issues, and they are reading stories about gun violence, and they are worried about a whole variety of things that maybe I didn't have to worry about when I was their age: We can't be hopeless because we can make progress.
Last year, for the first time in 20 years, here in the Senate, we passed a bipartisan gun safety bill. It didn't do everything that needs to be done, but we showed--not easily, but we showed--that we could act.
During my time as a public official in Virginia, we have finally worked our way into the ranks of one of the 10 safest States in terms of major and violent crime. We were never in the 10 safest for a very long time, but, sort of toward the end of my time as Governor, we got there, and we maintained that position. The Virginia General Assembly, which had long, frankly, been enthralled to the National Rifle Association, whose headquarters is in Virginia, in 2019 and 2020 finally embraced a set of gun safety measures that haven't eliminated gun violence, just like seatbelts don't eliminate all traffic accident death, but have helped make us safer. And if we can do it in Virginia, though we have so much more to do, we can do it here in the U.S. Congress.
Thank you for indulging me and letting me just share the personal nature of this reflection in my hometown, in this place where we have spent so much time and that Richmonders know in such an intimate way.
And this beautiful building, now 100 years old, where we have gone for generations to celebrate, it has a bloodstain on it now. And I am sure that stain is cleaned away, but we all will see it, and we all will feel it forever--forever.
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