An Open Letter To Gerard Way

Mr. Way (or Gerard? I don’t know, I’m bad at this),

I am writing this as a fan of your music and someone who finds you to be inspiring. Not just because of your dealing with your personal demons, but because of your belief that rock and roll should help people, make them feel good. You want to save lives, and you make music that reflects that.

Which is why I am interested in your thoughts about the recent events surrounding a school in Cleveland. No, more than that. Your thoughts on all of the similar situations that have occurred for years and yet we always react with “How could this happen?” In case you can’t tell, I’m dancing around saying the words “school shootings.”

Your band released a song called “Teenagers” which was a promise to your teenage fans that you wouldn’t lose faith in them. You wouldn’t stop trying to help them and let them know that people out there understand them. Further than that, you have made comments in interviews about wanting your concerts to be a safe space for all of your fans, a place where they feel welcome and understood. One of your more famous quotes is “All you knew was that this music made you feel different from anyone you shared a locker with. Someone finally understood you. This is what music is about.”

So I would like to know what you believe we need to do, as a society, to help prevent these things. I want to know where you think the blame should be placed, on the media, on parents, on an often underfunded school system that treats students less like individuals and more as numbers and test scores.

More than that, what can WE do? People who don’t have your media pull, people who are just barely coming out of our own teenage years? What can teenagers do for each other to make things work? High schoolers are politically powerless, socially frowned upon, what can they do for themselves or for each other to prevent another horrible event?

I’m not writing this calling out to you as the Freak Messiah, but as a very rare creature: an adult in a position of relative power WHO STILL UNDERSTANDS what it is to be one of these kids. Who wants to help.

I doubt you will ever read this, but it is my batsignal to you. I don’t expect you to have the answers, I don’t expect you to save the world. But I do want your input, your views, because people like you are that fucking rare. It seems that for most people, once they hit 22 they forget. You’ve held onto this well past that.

You save lives, how can the rest of us do the same?

Yours, Ashly