Tag: protest

Violence Is The Problem

After posting about the school shooting in Kentucky a couple of days ago, the eleventh such shooting in the country since January 1, 2018, I had a friend ask me a question that stuck with me.

(By the way, every time I think it’s time to walk away from social media altogether, someone posts some question or some expression of kindness that draws me back in. I suppose that’s the beauty of relationships and being willing to talk to each other.)

The question that my friend asked was as follows:

Russell, as an educator, what are you seeing from young people in regards to the sanctity of life? Have they become desensitized, or is this more of a mental health crisis?

I’m not sure that my response was really worth saving and reposting here. I’m not sure that I’ve captured what I’m really thinking, but I think it is a start.
And sometimes a start is enough.
I do not believe that young people are desensitized to violence at all.
Nor do I think this can be blamed on a mental heath crisis (although, the stress of this life and our complete refusal to fund mental healthcare certainly exacerbates that.)
 
In my experience, they’re all too aware of the unpredictable nature of the dangers surrounding them.
 
What has happened is that they are losing their sense of safety and security. There are few places in their world that are untouched by violence.
 
This doesn’t desensitize them. I would argue that it has the exact opposite effect of making them hypersensitive to violence and death.
 
And it’s this sense of an absence of safety that harms them and causes a lost sense of the sanctity of life.
 
If even school and church are places of death and destruction, life doesn’t seem sacred at all, does it?
 
America’s love affair with violence as a cure for what ails us, our insistence that violence is the only appropriate response to anything less than adoration, our love affair with instruments of violence as our only recourse, is what I see as the central problem.
The mere possibility of infringement buries the art of peaceable assembly, of petition in seeking redress of grievances.
We’ve denigrated the outstretched hand and replaced it with the fist.
And we’re passing it on, everyday, to our children.

What It Means to be an American

I am proud to be an American.

Mr. Trump did not have my support during the election. His policies are often the exact opposite of what I believe the country stands for and believes in.

I have been “giving him a chance” since he won the Republican nomination in the hopes that if he were to win, I could find a pathway through the next four years that wouldn’t be damaging for my family.

I have certainly been giving him a chance since he became the President-Elect.

His actions, his immaturity, his selections for cabinet members, and his public statements for where he is planning to take the country have only increased my concerns for the direction that he and the Republican Party are heading.

His policies, his actions, his attitude are directly hostile to my family. And so, in the tradition of the protests that have long made this country great, I will protest against the actions of President-Elect whenever he attempts to take the country in a direction that I believe harms people.

This is, for me, what it means to be an America: To stand in opposition to oppression, hatred, bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, and fear. To speak for the voiceless. To give comfort to the sick, the injured, the homeless, and the hopeless. To sing of this sweet land of liberty and justice for all.

What I will not do is what Mr. Trump did for most of President Obama’s term in office. I will not attempt to delegitimize the person in the office simply because I don’t like the color of his skin, the name he calls himself, or where he was born.

In short, after Mr. Trump takes the oath of office today, I will be hoping for him to mature and lead this country in a way that would bring honor to us all. I will also be ready to stand and oppose his actions whenever and wherever I believe it is necessary to do so.

I will, however, respect the office of The Presidency even if Mr. Trump does not.

And so, Mr. President, it’s time for you to lead, and to do so selflessly for the good of all the country, even those you call enemies. If you do, you will have my support wherever I can give it.

If you don’t, I will stand, armed only with my reason, to oppose you. Because that is what it means to be an American.