In this op-ed, singer-songwriter Kesha explains why she teamed up with March for Our Lives and rapper Chika to fight gun violence.

When I was growing up in school we had mandatory fire drills, we had mandatory tornado drills living in Tennessee, but we never had something that my nephew now has in his public elementary school: mandatory active shooter drills.

The first school shooting in my memory happened at Columbine. I was 12 years old and remember feeling as if the world was crumbling. I thought it was a freak accident, it must be. I thought this school shooting was something we would all read about in history books as a solitary, horrifying event in our country. One that every American family could understand was an earthquake to the core of our very foundation: our children. I assumed we would rally together, and it would never happen again. It couldn’t happen again, something so horrific wreaking havoc on one of the safest, traditionally mundane, and yet mandatory places: a school. But, here we are, almost 20 years later, and somehow, I feel as if we’ve found ourselves as a nation not only divided by politics, but seemingly taking sides on the basic human necessity to be safe.

I can’t imagine how hard it must be for teachers, like my nephew’s, who have to explain to kindergarteners why they have to hide under their desks and not make a sound. I heard a story about a teacher at my nephew’s school telling her young students that the drill was in case a “monster” comes into the school, and everyone has to hide from the “monster.” We can tell children why fires and tornadoes happen because we have science, but how do we explain this? We are forced to lie to children because the truth is too nonsensical: the truth is that politicians seem to be too scared for their own jobs and donation sources to try to do anything significant to prevent these awful shootings from happening again.

It's sad to me that many politicians, pundits, and everyday Americans dismiss gun violence, not just mass shootings in schools, as just another part of the culture in our country. I wish it wasn’t. It doesn’t have to be.

In the years since Columbine, little has been done in order to take meaningful action against gun violence; those who do often do so because they have been personally impacted by the terror and heartbreak gun violence brings. But we have seen young people, like Black Lives Matter activists and the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, mobilize to do something about the devastation in their communities. And finally, it seems, people are listening.

The intense desire to change the normalcy of the American gun violence culture is why I wanted to come together with the Parkland students behind the advocacy group March for Our Lives, as well as the artists Chika and my younger brother Sage. Together, we’re asking Americans to vote for candidates who support common sense gun laws in this November’s midterm elections, so that we can finally end senseless gun violence. (You can easily find the politicians in your state who stand for common sense gun laws on the Gun Sense Voter website, which is supported by Everytown and Moms Demand Action.)

Sage is 18 as I write this and was in high school last year when a former student attacked Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. I remember him telling me that he didn’t feel safe at school anymore. The public high school he attended in Tennessee increased security, in many ways mirroring the reactionary tactics put in place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The code-red drills increased, and students were too scared to attend their own pep rallies. That insecurity inspired Sage to write the first version of a song called “Safe” with Drew Pearson and our mother, Pebe Sebert.