National Month of Hope

April is National Month of Hope! We will be focusing on the things that give us hope, and we encourage our customers to share what gives them hope as well.

Most recently we were inspired by the March for Our Lives on March 24th in Washington, D.C. For those who don’t know, this march was held to support awareness of gun violence and to promote tighter gun control laws. The March for Our Lives was one of the largest protests in U.S. history with an estimated 1.2-2 million people participating in the U.S. alone (there were also over 800 sibling marches around the world). This is impressive on its own, but even more so when you recognize that the people responsible for organizing it were 15 and 16 year old students.

The students were survivors of the Parkland school shooting and began planning the march shortly after the shooting. As with every new shooting in our country, people were appalled and frustrated by the unwillingness of our country’s leadership to make any changes toward protecting citizens from continued gun violence. Instead of being outraged and moving on, like so many of us do after yet another senseless act of violence, the Parkland students took that outrage and channeled it into a powerful message that inspired hope in a lot of people, including us at Crystal Delights.

If the March for Our Lives is an indication of what younger generations are capable of, then it feels like there genuinely is hope for the future of our country. There is a great deal of apathy in the U.S., particularly regarding gun violence. Too many people see it as an unsolvable problem that we simply have to live with. This new generation, living with the threat of gun violence and surrounded by adults unwilling to help, may be the ones to fix the problem and inspire others to do the same. We are certainly hopeful.