Barricades

Stacked against the door are their chairs, desks, books. A makeshift barricade against the person prowling the halls with a handgun and an assault rifle. 95% of public schools in the United States practice lockdown drills. The ways in which these drills are conducted range considerably, but many schools throughout the country employ barricading. It is simple and it is free – that is one of the reasons it is a tactic that has been employed for centuries when the weak struggle to prevent the strong from invading their space. In contemporary American culture, it is our children and educators who are forced to employ this practice in response to the horrifying reality of gun violence in schools. This series of photographs is taken in schools in multiple states and addresses this practice in the spaces in which it is employed. Surrounded by lovingly decorated classroom walls, a barricade is erected to keep a potential intruder at bay. While it is important to remember the specific tragedies that have led to these lockdown drills, my interest is in thinking more broadly about how these incidents of school gun violence play out on a national level. Through this series I hope to address, at least in part, the psych burden we ask our students and educators to bear as continued inaction on gun violence plays out in our homes, places of worship, schools, and public spaces.