Enough Is Enough EWI by Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra

On Valentine’s Day of 2018, seventeen beautiful, caring humans were murdered by gunshot at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. I began composing Enough is Enough, Never Again: Sketches just after the Parkland, Florida school shootings. The alto ostinato sings “enough is enough is…”; the bass theme repeats “never again”; while the first name of each beautiful person massacred in Lakeland is set in the trebles.
At the March 26, 2018 Washington DC March for our Lives, 11-year-old Naomi Wadler spoke of how African American women are disproportionately affected by gun violence, but their stories are rarely reported. Naomi is right. After searching for weeks, I found a small representative list of African American women from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s TEDWomen talk of 2016. I then had to search each woman’s name individually. Many of the stories are incomplete, but what I learned was that most of these women were unarmed and many of them were murdered by police. The names of these women live on in the soprano voices of the carillon and their names stand framing the names of the schoolchildren and teachers before and after. I use the word Sketches because each life here has and should have had so many more stories to tell, and tragically, the names here represent thousands of more names that could be added. Think of Marshall County High School and Sandy Hook (Dylan Hockley’s name is here, too), and…..
African American women named:
Courtlin Arrington, 17, Birmingham, AL HS, March 2018
Hadiya Pendleton, 15, Chicago, 2012
Taiyania Thompson, 16, Washington DC, 2018
Michelle Cusseaux, 50, Phoenix, August 2014
Tanisha Anderson, 37, Cleveland, November 13, 2014
Aura Rosser, 40, Ann Arbor, MI November 2014
Meagan Hockaday, 26, Oxnard, CA, March 28, 2015
Aiyana Stanley Jones, 7, Detroit, MI 2010
Janisha Fonville, 20, Charlotte, VA, February 18, 2015
Kathryn Johnston, 92, Atlanta, GA, November 21, 2006
Kayla Moore, 41, Berkeley, CA, Feb. 12, 2013
Rekia Boyd, 22, Chicago, March 21, 2012
Shelly Frey, 27, Houston, December 8, 2012
Yvette Smith, 47, Austin, TX, February 16–17, 2014

Children and teachers named:
Alyssa Alhadeff, 14
Scott Beigel, 35
Martin Duque Anguiano, 14
Nicholas Dworet, 17
Aaron Feis, 37
Jamie Guttenberg, 14
Chris Hixon, 49
Luke Hoyer, 15
Cara Loughran, 14
Gina Montalto, 14
Joaquin Oliver, 17
Alaina Petty, 14
Meadow Pollack, 18
Helena Ramsay, 17
Alex Schachter, 14
Carmen Schentrup, 16
Peter Wang
Dylan Hockley

Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, carillon; Paul Eachus, ewi
(University of Michigan Lurie Carillon)