Showing posts with label Gun Violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gun Violence. Show all posts

Friday, May 5, 2023

Day 5: Numb

Day Five

 

I am feeling uncomfortably numb today. It hasn’t anything to do with the hectic schedule I’ve had all week. It has to do with the daily news.

The ridiculous Battle of the Budget continues to drag on.

Two-thirds of SCOTUS is corrupt, and no one is doing anything about it. The proper person to begin to act would be Senate Judiciary Committee chairperson Dick Durbin, but he seems paralyzed. Crooked Media helpfully provided his phone number.

We must worry about going to school, to the store, to a church or synagogue, to a concert, to a club, and now to our front yard. Neighbors had the NERVE to ask a man to stop shooting his gun off outdoors in the middle of the night because it was waking the baby. The neighbor paid back this insult by invading the house and killing nearly everyone in the family with a gunshot to the head.

So much for asking a neighbor to turn down the music. Now we must worry about that too because, of course, no one is going to do a damn thing to stop the gun violence.

Rethuglican legislatures across the country continue to put the lives of trans/LGBTQ kids and adults at risk with their outrageous so-called ‘protect the kids’ laws. Not only that, but they also continue to put the lives of pregnant women in danger with their strict abortion laws.  Doctors are afraid to intervene and perform an abortion even when the woman’s life is at risk. This morning I read an article about obstetricians wanting to leave Idaho and about two of their hospitals shutting down obstetrical/maternity care.

It's obvious they want to keep their voters and future voters ignorant and stupid with the book banning and restrictions on what can and cannot be taught. Here’s a link to a study showing how poorly students are doing in their knowledge of civics and history. Yes, let’s keep everyone stupid and voting for Rethuglicans like lemmings falling over a cliff.

Their other plot to get rid of us god-awful liberals and Democrats is to have us thrown out of legislative bodies for disagreeing and for limiting where, when how and how old we can be to vote.  Rethuglicans are scared to death of Gen Z, powerful young people who THINK and ACT with their votes.

So why am I feeling numb? It’s overwhelming. It’s too much. My heart breaks when there are needless deaths due to gun violence. I get angry at Rethuglicans’ evil shenanigans. I am outraged when I read about women who nearly die trying to get decent obstetrical care to save their lives.  I am frustrated about having to wonder whether I’ll get shot if I ask my neighbor to stop driving so damn fast down our street.

I am numb because there’s only so much, I can take before my brain steps in and says: enough.  Time to detach.  Time to turn off the emotions.  Time to not care for a while.

I must do it to save my sanity and my physical health.

I am participating in the American Cancer Society’s challenge to write for thirty minutes each day in May. I do a lot of writing and I can meet this challenge. What I plan to do is make a blog entry each day with what I’ve written.

I wanted to participate in memory of loved ones who fought cancer bravely but succumbed:

My brother-in-law Jeff

My sister-in-law Ann

My dear friend Kay

My Uncle Bob

My Uncle John

I also wanted to help raise money to support research and a cure for all those who are currently fighting this vicious disease.

My Facebook to the fundraiser is here.

 

Friday, April 7, 2023

Another State Goes Fascist

There was yet another school shooting two Mondays ago, at a Christian school in Nashville, TN. Three little kids and three adults were shot and killed by yet another rampaging person trying to murder as many people as possible. The police responded quickly, thankfully, and killed the shooter.

And what was the response of Rethuglican lawmakers in Washington? Crickets.

But some of the Rethug legislators in TN did say something, mostly having to do with a cowardly it sure was horrible but "we're not gonna fix it." Cowardly because they all depend on their campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association. I knew nobody was going to do anything productive. The best the Rethugs could offer was more hypocritical and useless “thoughts and prayers”.

Something very encouraging happened the other day. Thousands of young people, the Gen Z folk, walked out of their high schools and colleges and began to march. They were joined by other supportive adults but these were mostly the young.

I was so proud of them. They reminded me of my generation once upon a time. It was a time when we Boomers were young, had enough of Establishment ways, and took to the streets. Gen Z were on a march to save their lives. They’d had enough of Rethuglican excuses and deflections and denials. Now they wanted action. They were amazing.

They flooded the capitol building, where most of the legislators there just brushed right by them. There was one State Assemblyman that did agree to meet with them and why he did, I couldn’t begin to guess. He was the most useless Rethuglican spokesman ever. All he did was ask the young people to show him which firearm they’d be most comfortable being shot with. What the fuck was that?

Three legislators inside interrupted the session briefly to support the protestors and they were promptly kicked out. The angry Rethug majority threatened to expel them permanently. They voted to do so and then truly showed their racist colors! Two of the legislators were young Black men. The other was a middle-aged white woman. Two were expelled; one was not. Guess who. If you guessed only the Black guys were expelled, you’d be spot on.

They were initially accused of instigating an insurrection ala January 6th. Then I guess the charge was disorderly behavior. But still: why was the white woman spared?

So, does the Tennessee state government reject the First Amendment? Or is it only when it’s the minority objecting to the majority’s way of doing things?

And while we’re talking about disruptive behavior, why do we still have traitors and legislators who engaged in treasonous behavior still service in the nation’s House and Senate?

This is in-your-face-we-don’t-give-a-fuck-how-it-looks fascism, racism, suppression, and repression going on right out in the open for everyone to see.

Rev. Barber might ask: “What are we going to do with this?”

Our votes aren’t enough. People need to be speaking up and pulling a Howard Beale: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” We need to get into “good trouble” like the Tennessee Three. We need to be joining with other organizations that are fighting fascism and the attacks on democracy. We need to start paying attention to what’s happening around us.

I felt better this morning and into the afternoon when I began reading and hearing about the pushback going on over what happened to the two Black legislators. I’ve been reading articles today in which the Tennessee Assembly is condemned for an illegal action in violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment.

One of the expelled legislators is from the Nashville area and their city council is moving to reinstate Mr. Jones to his seat. They are outraged by what happened.

Mr. Pearson is from the Memphis area and there’s no word on what will happen with that council. He should be reinstated too.

I will not set foot in any fascist state. Increasingly more and more red states like Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and now Tennessee are going on my do-not-go-there list.

We are having issues with spreading fascism because once the Rethugs began to realize they weren’t going to be able to steal elections by crying they’d been cheated of a win, they began stacking the school boards, township councils, city councils, and state legislators with ultra-right wing conservative and/or evangelical MAGA QAnoners. Now we have these people trying to run democracy into the ground.

I got an email from an organization called Run for Something. They are encouraging that WE start running for these positions too. I thought about Rev. Barber again. “What are we going to do with this?” I thought about what I could do. I saw that there would be a position on my district’s school board, and I decided I would run for it.

We must DO something.

Other worthy articles I read yesterday and today:

Dan Rather

Alternet

Truthout

Huff-Post

Raw Story 

Saturday, April 1, 2023

The day President Reagan was shot

 

On Monday, March 27, 2023, a shooter got into a Christian school in Nashville, TN. The shooter killed three children and three adults before being killed by responding police. The usual tug of war has been going on between the Rethuglicans, who want to continue loosening gun control laws, and Democrats, who want to at least ban automatic weapons. People who have survived school shootings, parents, and other reasonably minded folk march, contact their legislators, and speak out against school shootings/mass shootings which just continue to occur more frequently.

Nothing will get done this time either.

Nothing will get done until the children of the Rethuglican legislators are shot up.  It’s inevitable such a thing could happen. Violent people have already begun attacking legislators and their families.

I get a newsletter called This Day in History. On Thursday, I was reminded that President Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington D.C. on March 30, 1981. He’d only taken office in January. He was at the Washington Hilton for a meeting. He had his entire entourage with him as he exited the hotel and headed toward his limo.

There were people standing by, watching. I suppose the Secret Service had asked them to stay in place. Nevertheless, a young man came forward, his gun came up and he started shooting. The agent closest to President Reagan grabbed him and literally shoved him into the limo. Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, was down and gravely wounded. Another Secret Service agent and a D.C. policeman were also wounded.

The other agents grabbed the shooter and pushed him up against the wall, disarming him. The young man’s name was John Hinckley. If ever a shooter was disturbed, it was Mr. Hinckley.  He’d seen the movie Taxi Driver, starring Robert DeNiro. Co-starring was Jodie Foster, then a young teenager. She was playing a hooker the taxi driver apparently wanted to rescue. For some reason, the taxi driver decided shooting a politician was the way to do it.

Well, Hinckley watched this movie over and over and over. He was entranced by Jodie Foster. In 1981, she was just beginning college. Hinckley got it into his head that he could impress and maybe woo Foster if he acted out the role of the taxi driver. Why shoot just any old politician? Why not go for the President?

It turned out that President Reagan had been wounded too. The bullet collapsed one lung and just missed his heart. Still, he kept his sense of humor, telling the doctors he hoped they were all Republicans. And when his wife came in to see him after his surgery, he said, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

I remember it very well. I was in shock. How could the President, surrounded by the Secret Service and police, get shot on a public street in Washington, D.C.?  Did the President get thoughts and prayers from his party in Congress?  I don’t remember that part.

I do remember that James Brady, the Press Secretary, had a severe brain injury and was never the same. He and his wife wanted a gun bill passed but, of course, there was resistance from the Republican party. The Bradys and other safe-gun-law activists worked on legislators to pass a bill that would…gasp! Require background checks and a waiting period.

The Brady bill was first introduced in Congress in 1987. President Reagan had recovered from his gunshot wound and so did the Secret Service agent and DC policeman. James Brady did not, not fully. Again, he was never the same and needed intensive therapy to improve to the point at which he was.

The bill didn’t pass the first time, nor the second, nor the third. On and on it went until Rep. Chuck Schumer introduced it for the last time in 1993. Who even remembered what happened in 1981, right?  James Brady who? But this time it finally passed.

It didn’t go far enough.

In 1994, somehow legislation got through that banned automatic weapons, and President Clinton signed it into effect. Unfortunately, the ban was for ten years only. Did it help much? Results were mixed and the ban lapsed in 2014.

I remember Columbine. That was another unheard-of event. Two kids shot up their classmates and teachers. How was that possible? Sandy Hook was heartbreaking. Among those killed were too many babies, just six or seven years old. Surely something would be done. Thoughts and prayers, that was it.

It feels like every time I turn around, there is a new school shooting or a mass shooting.  Every time, I feel sick at heart. I know nothing will be done. Rethuglicans will offer their useless and hypocritical “thoughts and prayers” but that’s all.

Why are these legislators so willing to allow children to be slaughtered like that? It’s because they are controlled by the National Rifle Association. There are lists of legislators and the obscene amounts of money they receive from the NRA.

What can I do but vote them out? However, I don’t live in a state that puts guns ahead of children. It’s up to the voters there, the grandparents, parents, and Gen Z kids who need to go to the polls and vote out those legislators. They must stop voting against their own best interests, but that means they need to wake the fuck up.

I’ve written before about my “I didn’t think this would ever happen to me day”. That was December 13, 1972. A custodian went berserk, pulled out a machete, stabbed a security guard, and took a hostage. He held the hostage in his office, which was right next to my classroom. Anyway, now when there’s a school shooting, I always remember lying on the cold floor while the crisis played out. I also have wondered: what if that custodian had had a gun instead of a machete? He began his rampage in our crowded cafeteria.   How many people could he have potentially killed?

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