Eight years after Columbine we have failed to find meaningful ways to address violence in this country. It is time for America to talk about peace - peace at home and peace abroad. The same way students were killed yesterday in their classrooms in Blacksburg, Iraqi students are being killed in their schools and in their homes in Baghdad. President Bush offered profound words in response to news of the tragedy on the Virginia Tech campus. He said that schools should be places of safety, sanctuary, and learning. Well, his words must be put iin the context of his war in Iraq. Death is death, murder is murder, and the pain of loss hurts us all the same. - From Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus

All America is in shock and tears - and should be - over the murder of 33 students at Virginia Tech. How much of America is in shock and tears at the report from Afghanistan that US marines used "excessive force" last month, in a machine-gun rampage that covered 10 miles of highway and left 12 civilians dead, including an infant and three elderly men? ... We have a government of old men who turn guns and bombs into Idols for the worship of their own power. Is it surprising when young men in Afghanistan or Virginia use such guns to worship their own power? Certainly these killers bear personal responsibility for their actions. Whatever nightmares, fears, and rage haunted the Virginia or the Afghanistan killers are not excuses for their murders. Neither is the official arrogance that for no legitimate reason sent armies to shatter Iraq, or the official arrogance that turns ownership of assault weapons into a constitutional right. If the president is serious about being horrified by the Virginia killings, let him NOW, TODAY, ask Congress to outlaw assault weapons and announce NOW, TODAY, the beginning with commitment to a swift completion for bringing safely home US soldiers from th US occupation of Iraq - an occupation as criminal, and as rooted in the worship of violence, as the murders in Virginia. - From Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director of Shalom Center and co-author of "The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims (reviewed in the current issue of FOR's "Fellowship" quarterly)

This is horrible and this is tragic and this gives us an idea of what it is like to live just one day in Iraq. - From Larry Johnson, former CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counter-terrorism official

Mass shootings are common in the United States - we've had several in recent months in offices, and almost weekly in families. I cannot find another country where mass shootings are so common outside of war or revolution, regardless of their other characteristics. - From Mike Males, author of "Kids and Guns: How Politicians, Experts, and the Press Fabricate Fear of Youth"

Other Western countries like Australia and the UK have one mass shooting, then institute policies on guns and don't have a repeat. In the US, it happens again and again. - From Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, founding member of the International Action Network on Small Arms
We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies.

We will prevail, we will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.

From the poet Nikki Giovanni in Blacksburg at the convocation at the memorial service on the day of the tragedy