The Facebook post about the young man's death hit me hard. He, who had torn all the drawers out of our bureaus and desks, dumping everything into huge piles on our dining room floor, was gone.
I envisioned him and his girlfriend kicking over and through everything, looking for anything of value, anything that would buy them the heroin they so desperately needed.
In the few minutes of looting my home, they stomped on ceramics from the 19th century and glass from the early 20th. They left footprints on family photos from the 1960s and smashed clay animals my children had proudly created in elementary school. They destroyed what couldn't be pawned or melted down.
What they wanted most was cash. They dug deeply in our sock and underwear drawers, and they spun the mattresses off of the beds. If there was any cash hidden, anywhere, their intent was to find it.
I love Bernie Sanders. I love his passion, his message of concern for the middle class and women, his voice expressing our need for health care and education, for living wages, and for compassion. I have experienced, firsthand, his thoughtfulness. In 2002, I took my eighth graders to Washington,