Do Something. Please.

Robert Reich had a very moving newsletter this morning, for me, anyway.  https://robertreich.substack.com/p/empathy-and-activism?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web He wrote about the different types of empathy and its opposite, indifference or numbness.  The article meant a great deal to me because I am an empathic soul with an inner warrior that comes to the surface when there is injustice.

The slaughter of the elderly black citizens in Buffalo, the 19 children and 2 teachers in Alverde, TX has awakened that inner warrior.  The massacre of these innocent people is a gross injustice.  They deserved to live out their lives in whatever path they were led.  In addition to all those people killed with yet another AR-15, seventeen were wounded at the elementary school.  It makes my blood boil.  I can’t even begin to imagine the devastation and grief the families feel.

I saw a post listing all of the mass shootings, all of them carried out by an AK-15, an automatic weapon that fires many rounds within seconds.  They kill people because of the devastating and mutilating wounds they cause.  Citizens do not need automatic weapons, which were designed for the military.  The primary and only purpose is to kill a lot of people which makes it appropriate for soldiers but surely not for 18 year old disturbed or supremacist kids.  Hunters don't need automatic weapons.  They wouldn't be able to use the meat from an animal blown to pieces.   Access to those weapons has to be changed and it's up to people with empathy to bring that change about.

Robert Reich wrote that some people are so empathic, they feel as if these tragedies are happening to them.  They so strongly identify with the victims it becomes almost debilitating.  They are unable to act because they are so devastated.

There’s empaths more like me.  We grieve deeply but then are moved to act and try to do something to make things better.  I’m disabled so marching and carrying signs aren’t for me now although I once did participate in a sit in at the formerly called Health, Education & Welfare (HEW) building in Washington, DC.  It was 1976 and the law to protect people with disabilities had been passed in 1973, but the HEW secretary never signed them. 

I was 21 and volunteered to go in with a group of Deaf, blind, and wheel chair bound protesters.  I would be one of the interpreters there for the Deaf.  The police were reluctant to move in and remove us because it would have looked really bad in the press.  Instead, they did their best to drive us out, denying us food and phones, ratcheting up the AC although it was April and cold, and making us remove our shoes before going down the hall to the bathrooms.  I slept on the floor with everyone else, my purse as a pillow. 

We left the next morning because many protestors needed medication and other necessities that were denied by the police.  We weren’t angry about that; we were trespassing so we knew we wouldn’t be coddled.  Similar protests went on at HEW offices around the country.  Secretary Califano signed the regulations.  I totally value that experience.  I felt I was doing something positive about correcting an injustice. 

I can’t do that but there’s a lot I can do from home and have already contacted organizations to volunteer my time.  I can write letters, send emails, join a phonebank, address envelopes – whatever it takes.  It’s not much but when people get involved and do the same thing, it’s amazing what we can do.

On the other end of the spectrum, Reich wrote about the people who either don’t care because they’re narcissists (like the “illustrious” 45), because they’re too focused on what’s going on in their lives, or because they feel nothing they do will make a difference.  I can’t say a thing to change a narcissist and some people really have very overwhelming issues already, but I can say to the people who think what they do doesn’t matter:  yes, it does.  Doing one small thing matters.  Stepping up and. Like Howard Beale from Network, proclaiming: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Harry Chapin was a singer/philanthropist and his cause was hunger.  He would say, “When in doubt, do something.”  Well, that applies here too.

Please.

Step up and do something too.

Michigan Parents Want ASL in Schools

I was grabbed by a headline I saw the other day and only just got a chance to read it.  It’s called “Parents of deaf kids push for more American Sign Language education” and this is the url: https://www.wxyz.com/news/national/two-americas/parents-of-deaf-kids-push-for-more-american-sign-language-education.  It grabbed me, of course, because these were *hearing* parents of deaf kids requesting ASL education. 

I wrote before about the times in which my parents grew up and hearing parents were mostly very much against deaf children learning sign language.  I also wrote about my experiences as an interpreter for Deaf students in the school system.  There, there were 3 different methods of communication and 3 different kinds of interpreters: sign language, cued speech and lipreading (oral method).  We were beginning to see the spread of cochlear implants, the newest thing in “fixing” a Deaf kid.

 When Deaf parents have a Deaf baby, that child learns sign language right from the beginning.  When they begin school, they have a language in place: American Sign Language.  They have an easier time with English and don’t lag behind as much as the deaf kids with hearing parents. 

Why?  Those kids don’t have language from the get go.  It takes a while for the parent to realize there’s a problem.  The first thing they do is take their kids to doctors and audiologists who still view deafness as something pathological that needs to be “fixed”.  They recommend testing to see if the kids qualify for cochlear implants.  Meanwhile, other hearing kids are in preschool learning and signing deaf kids are in the process of acquiring more language too.

By the time deaf kids of hearing parents enter kindergarten, they’re lagging behind their hearing and signing deaf peers.  They may or may not have been implanted.  The white coated specialists have advised hearing parents NOT to use sign language because it might “impede” language acquisition.  This is the same bullshit reasoning used when my mother attended an oral-only school for the deaf.  Everyone told my grandparents that learning sign language would prevent my mother from speaking proper English.

Hearing educators think they know what’s best for Deaf children.  They don’t.  They know little to nothing about sign language and how much it benefits and enriches the lives of Deaf people.  I’m very happy that, in this article, mothers in Michigan with deaf kids are united in trying to get a bill passed in their state legislature that would allow for ASL in schools.  “These women are now behind the fight for Lead-K, a legislative campaign calling for the state to put ASL learning on equal footing with English, and ensure deaf kids are at age-expected levels by kindergarten.”  I hope it passes but don’t hold out with too much hope for it because of the mindset of the GQP: they are determined to set the clocks back any way they can.

Even after the Deaf President Now and Deaf Pride movement, there is still so much ignorance about deafness.  I think many people think ASL is just uneducated English.  It’s not.  It’s a beautiful expressive language with its own grammatical rules, syntax, and idioms.  Here’s a better source explaining what ASL is from the National Association of the Deaf’s website: https://www.nad.org/resources/american-sign-language/what-is-american-sign-language/

 

Surviving the Unimaginable

Survivors of the horrific mass shooting at Uvalde Elementary School have begun to have interviews aired.  Seeing these little kids recounting the trauma they suffered is heart breaking and I saw this clip: https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/uvalde-students-speak-out-after-surviving-school-shooting-140955205960 I think what breaks my heart is knowing they will not forget this and the memories will stay with them forever.

I know.

On December 13, 1972, I was 17 and entered my first period psychology class.  I was a senior and life was good.  Soon it would be my birthday and then Christmas.  My best friend normally sat next to me and we’d pass notes but she was helping our guitar teacher that morning. 

Our windows faced the quadrangle, which is where we could take our lunch breaks in better weather or take smoke breaks in the designated area.  We could see the cafeteria.  First period hadn’t really begun yet and our teacher was rounding up the rest of the stragglers before the bell rang.  Suddenly, students poured out of the cafeteria into the quad, screaming. 

We ran to our windows and opened them, letting in the frigid air.  We wanted to know what was going on.  A couple of girls stumbled over and yelled, “He’s got a knife!  He’s chasing us with a knife!”  Who?  But then all hell broke loose.

Our teacher ran in and locked both doors to the classroom even as our assistant principal shouted over the intercom, “Lock all doors!  Teachers, lock all doors!  This is an emergency!”

Someone rattled our back door knob for a few seconds and then was gone.  We heard pounding footsteps from the hallway around the corner from us, which then ran down to the cafeteria and music rooms.  There was more screaming from one girl and the sound of a door slamming to the custodial closet in the hallway behind us.

A man was shouting, “Shut up! Shut up!”

The girl answered hysterically: “Get that knife off my neck!”

I can’t speak to you about what that 15-year-old sophomore was experiencing, being held hostage and being threatened with death by a custodian who'd totally lost his mind.

I can only speak to what it was like being in the next room and listening to her scream and beg and pray to God he’d let her go.  And he would answer “There is no God and you are going to die.”

Once the SWAT team arrived, we had to lie down on the stone-cold floor.  Some of my classmates began to sob with fear or in sympathy with the hostage.  Our teacher was quick to hush them.  “If we can hear them, they’ll be able to hear us,” she cautioned.  “We don’t want to set him off and kill her.”  And I can imagine the other teachers near the slaughter room comforting and quieting their own students.

So, we were quiet.  Some continued to pray quietly; some whispered softly; some tried to occupy the time we waited.  I was reading “Exodus” by Leon Uris and began reading.  I tried not to think about what was happening or what might happen. I tried not to worry about my best friend. The floor was so cold and my stress must have been so high, my body began to tremble.  The shaking would start in my toes, move up my legs to my torso, spread to my arms and hands so that holding the book was difficult and then even my head shook.  The tremors would subside and then begin again all over.  My fingernails turned blue.

It was May in Alaverde, so not cold.  All the other students who had to hide were little, maybe 7-10?  I wondered, were they able to move close to friends to whisper and hold hands?  Did they worry about friends they had in the killing room?  Did they read books too?  It's not easy for a little kid to hold still for an hour.  They're meant to move around.

It was timeless, all of us lying there.  We could see SWAT officers right outside the windows, their huge rifles as terrifying as the girl’s piteous cries.  They'd brought a negotiator with them.   Did those hesitant police in Alaverde bring a negotiator?  But in situations like that, a killer with an automatic weapon comes to slaughter, not to talk.

There did come a time, though, when the girl's screams and the man's shouts dwindled away to nothing.  There came a time when we heard a noise at the back door and those closest to it saw adult feet racing a stretcher up the hall.  We heard sobbing and knew the girl was safe and on that stretcher.

We all sat up.  The relief and release of tension was almost palpable.  Then we heard what I thought was one big blast and we all went diving for the floor again.  The SWAT team shot the custodian at least 11 times when he charged them with the machete.

The assistant principal came over the loudspeaker again and said anyone who wanted to leave and go home, could.  I stayed long enough to be reunited with my bestie.  There were no feelings then, just cold numbness.  Like a robot, I took two buses to get to our neighborhood.  My brother met me there; he’d heard what happened on the radio at his school and walked out.

That weekend, news coverage brought tears.  On Monday, the thought of going back to school brought on panic attacks but I went anyway.  Our psychology teacher wanted us to write down what we remembered.  What a horrible assignment.  Still, I filled about 10 pages, my handwriting going from a neat script to a large scrawl.  There was no such thing as crisis intervention teams or comfort dogs.  I am glad the surviving children and teachers will have access to them.

Here’s what I know:  after a couple of weeks, the worst of it seems to subside.  Then a year passes and the anniversary comes up.  Bam!  Memories are so strong, it’s like it’s happening again.  It’s the same with the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th anniversaries and on days when something similarly horrific happens in a school.  All these almost 50 years, it feels like a knife to the heart when something like Alaverde or Margery Stoneman Douglas or Sandy Hook, Buffalo, and every other place there’s been a massacre occurs.  Thinking of what happened on December 13, 1972 hasn’t hit as strongly as it used to.  It really does hit hard every time someone walks into a place (school, store, club, doesn’t matter) with an AK-15 and starts shooting to kill.

Those poor kids.  They had to hide and be quiet.  They had to hear the screams of their classmates in that room with the shooter.  The little ones in there with the shooter had to think creatively and gruesomely to stay alive.  Memories will travel with them, even if they get counseling.  Counseling can help you understand why you remember these things.  Counseling doesn’t make them go away. 

Going without counseling is worse.  Then you bury your feelings and memories.  They come out anyway, in nightmares and depression and suppressed anger.

All because of a weapon in the hands of a person who never should've had one.

I understand the need for the 2^nd Amendment.  However, banning assault/automatic weapons is not undoing the 2^nd Amendment.  Civilians do not need AK-15s or any assault weapon.   These are weapons specifically for killing people because of the mutilating damage they cause.  That’s why some of the parents had to provide DNA, so that authorities could identify which unrecognizable child belonged to which family.

Thoughts and prayers don’t cut it anymore.  Defensive and deflective tactics by the GQP don’t cut it anymore.

The GQP claims to stand for “pro-life”.  No.  They do not care about anyone once they are born.  What happened to the GOP, that grand old party?  Those that disagree with what the GQP shenanigans, why won’t you make a stand and do the right thing?  Where is your courage, your backbone?

It's going to happen again and again because nothing is going to change.  More survivors will be left with traumatic memories and more families will grieve.  As for me, I'm doing what I can to advocate for automatic weapons such as the one used to murder those children and teachers to be banned.