Rep. Jim Himes: Why I walked out of the House’s moment of silence for Orlando; Washington Post, 6/14/16

Jim Himes, Washington Post; Rep. Jim Himes: Why I walked out of the House’s moment of silence for Orlando:

"Then I thought about how Congress would respond to the latest atrocity. There would be, for the umpteenth time, a moment of silence. To “honor” the victims. We did it five times just last year: Stop talking about sports and dinner and Donald Trump for about 10 seconds, put on our most serious faces, wonder if we’d turned off our phones. For 10 seconds.

Done. Over. On to the next thing.

Not me. Not anymore.

If the House of Representatives had a solitary moral fiber, even a wisp of human empathy, we would spend moments not in silence, but screaming at painful volume the names of the 49 whose bodies were ripped apart in Orlando, and the previous victims and the ones before them. We’d invite parents and partners and siblings up from Orlando, and ask them to speak, openly, rawly, honestly about their pain. We’d listen. And maybe, just maybe, we’d hear...

All I know is that the regular moments of silence on the House floor do not honor the victims of violence. They are an affront. In the chamber where change is made, they are a tepid, self-satisfying emblem of impotence and willful negligence. It is action that will stop next week’s mass shooting.

I will not be silent."