Another school shooting, another week in America
Another school shooting. Another week in America.
An eighth grade friend of my son said to me this weekend about his school’s new cell phone policy something to the effect of “why do they care more about keeping us safe from our phones than keeping us safe from guns?”
The reason he doesn’t want to turn in his phone at school in the morning? In case there is a school shooting. And this is in New York, where we have some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
Millions of conversations like this likely happened across the country this weekend, again. Many are shared on social media, blog posts, or articles… to what purpose?
It’s nothing we don’t know. Nothing that hasn’t been said.
We just don’t care.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of people as individuals care.
But as a country? We don’t care. We just don’t.
I knew after Sandy Hook that if dead first graders, mostly white, weren’t going to create a change, nothing would.
We are never going to do anything about it.
And I don’t really mean never, I still hold out hope, but the likelihood seems very low.
Arresting and charging the parents is at least a step in the right direction.
But then innocent/civilian/pretty much any individual loss of life has always been ok.
It’s literally part of how this country was founded and continues to operate (see also funding genocide in Palestine).
Everyone is expendable.
Why? Because that is just how committed we are to white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and the military-industrial complex.
What does this have to do with race?
Well, why do you think the right to bear arms is so deeply encoded and embedded in our culture?
Why do you think white men feel entitled to buy their troubled 14-year olds assault rifles for Christmas????
Somehow airline industry practices changed pretty swiftly after 9/11.
Maybe it’s because the attack was perceived as “on our country” from an outside non-white non-Christian threat.
(And maybe it’s also because the right to wear your shoes through security and carry liquids on planes is not seen as a “god given right” required in order to protect your land from the people you stole it from or enslaved to work it).
Where do we go from here?
We go where we always go - towards equity, inclusion, justice, and liberation.
We go towards a future where people get their needs met, not at the expense of others, but to the benefit of others.
We work in solidarity, across issues, across sectors, across industries.
We understand that systems of oppression are intertwined and compound on one another… and therefore have to all be dismantled together.
This doesn’t mean we all have to work on everything all at once but that we can and must work in solidarity with one another while leveraging our own impact.
What role are you committed to playing?
Banner photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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