Meredith Elizalde: We must fight for our children — and our beloved institutions — before they are gone
While a museum’s closure hardly equates to the losses our city has suffered from gun violence, we must be serious about preserving institutions where children flourish.
For those of us who have lost loved ones to gun violence, watching the legal machinations unfold can be excruciating. By the time we get to court, we have already lost. A child is dead. A family is shattered. A community is grieving. We spend years debating sentences and punishment and call that an adequate response.
But we are looking for justice in the wrong place. A courtroom can hold someone accountable for an act of gun violence, but as we have seen again and again, it cannot prevent that violence from happening. By the time we are standing there asking what punishment is enough, the damage is done. We are too late.
I know this because I have spent the past four years in courtrooms.
My son, Nick, should be a freshman in college. I should be listening to him talk about classes, new friends, and his dorm, not sitting in court listening to people discuss his murder. Nothing that happens in that courtroom can restore the future that was stolen from him.
And yet, so much of our response to violence begins there: after the violence, after the loss, after it is too late. We devote enormous attention and resources to punishment after harm has occurred while neglecting the people, places, and institutions that can help prevent harm in the first place.
And some of those places are disappearing right now.
On Sept. 27, the fourth anniversary of Nick’s murder, the Academy of Natural Sciences museum will close its doors to the public.
I cannot adequately describe what that closure or what that date means to me. When I told a dear friend about the date of the closure, she said, “It’s the end of joy.”
The Academy was one of Nick’s favorite places.
The museum was one of Nick’s favorite places. He celebrated his 9th birthday there. His favorite part was Academy in Action, where he watched the scientists work and asked them questions.
I can still picture 5-year-old Nick impressing a scientist with his knowledge of fossils. That scientist said something with the power to change a child’s life: “Wow, kid! You’re as good as I am. Come back when you grow up, and we’ll give you a job.”
Think about what a sentence like that can mean to a 5-year-old. Someone who had devoted his life to science looked at my little boy and told him: There is a place for you here.
Every child deserves that.
The museum has stood for more than two centuries. It survived the Civil War, two World Wars, epidemics and depressions. Generations of Philadelphia children have passed through its doors in search of wonder. Now those doors are closing to the public.
A museum closing hardly equates to the losses our city has suffered because of gun violence. But if we are serious about preventing violence, we have to be serious about building communities in which children can flourish.
Schools, museums, libraries, gardens, recreation centers, and arts programs give young people more than something to do. They offer opportunities to encounter worlds beyond their own. They connect children with adults who care about them, interests they did not know they had, communities to belong to, and futures they can imagine.
Prevention is not just policing. Prevention is investment: education, art, nature, and community.
A child walks through a door, discovers the world is bigger than they thought it was, and realizes there is a place for them in it.
Sometimes prevention looks like keeping that door open.
These places are treasures. Our children are treasures. So why does something have to be on the verge of disappearing before we decide it is worth fighting for?
We cannot punish our way into becoming a healthy society. Prevention is not just policing. It is a teacher, a coach, or a mentor. A museum that sparks curiosity. A school that gives a child purpose. Somewhere safe to go. Someone who notices when you don’t show up. That is the infrastructure of a healthy community.
For four years, I have listened to people debate accountability for what happened to Nick. But accountability does not belong only to the people inside a courtroom. It belongs to all of us.
What kind of city are we building for the children who are still here? What are we willing to protect before we lose it?
Philadelphia, this is the part that belongs to us.
If you are an individual, show up before the places that matter disappear.
If you are a corporation, invest in the city that makes your success possible.
If you own a sports team or have a public platform, use your money and influence.
If you are a university, bring your resources beyond the boundaries of your campus.
If you have extraordinary wealth, don’t wait to put your name on something new. Help keep something we already treasure alive.
Volunteer. Fund a program. Adopt a school. Keep a door open. Give a child somewhere to belong.
We have the money, the expertise, the institutions, and the people. We have the incredible Philadelphia fighting spirit. What we need now is the will, because we are losing our treasures one by one. We cannot keep mourning what we were unwilling to protect.
When I left the courthouse last week, I went to the Academy of Natural Sciences. I refused to let that day belong to murder.
It belonged to Nick. The kid who loved animals and nature. The artist. The curious boy who lived an extraordinary 14 years before anyone ever called him a victim.
I went back to remember how Nick lived, not how he died.
No sentence handed down in a courtroom can change what happened to my son. But there are children in Philadelphia right now whose futures have not yet been taken from them. There are schools we can still save, institutions we can still support, communities we can still strengthen.
There are doors we can still keep open. Fight for them now — not after the doors close, not after the funding disappears, not after another child is killed.
Fight for them while they are still here.
Meredith Elizalde is Nick’s mom. A former Philadelphia high school teacher, she is currently a graduate student at the University of Montana.
