Category: gun violence

Something has gone very wrong

Posted on by kathiemm
Participants at vigil, Sherborn, MA, August 6, 2019, commemorating Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and latest mass shootings in the USA. Photo courtesy of Lewis Randa, the Peace Abbey

by Dot Walsh

In the years from 1982 to the present, there have been 110 mass shootings in the United States;  according to statistics,  107 of these have been perpetrated by young to older men.

As I reflect on the carnage and suffering engulfing our country, I am bewildered and angered by how our Congress has resisted passing a simple law banning assault weapons and requiring a background check for all gun buyers, including those who buy guns online. Something has gone very wrong in this country when we cannot see clearly what is happening or gather the courage to stand up for the values that will promote peace and love.

Some men and women do show that courage. Among them are a group of people who have been standing up and speaking out, holding vigils, and praying for many years, remembering the people who bear the suffering that comes with the loss of their loved ones to violence.

The Life Experience School and friends gathered Tuesday, August 6, 2019, at the Peace Memorial in Sherborn, Massachusetts, to honor those who were killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. The group gathered at the Stone that memorializes all victims of violence, both past and present.

To promote resistance to violence, I want to send a message to all the young men in our country who are being abused by corporate America and taught to hate. Social media, Hollywood, and others have gained power over you and led you down a path of ignorance and submission. But you have been gifted by a Higher Power with talents and energy as yet undiscovered. Stop for one minute and list in your mind two things you are grateful for. Then ask yourself how you can pay forward for the gifts you have received. We all have reasons to be thankful for living in this country. Maybe the problem facing the country today is not having enough positive role models and not absorbing enough LOVE in our hearts to take a stand to make things right. Can you become one of those role models? Can you find and share the love in your heart?

References: Washington Post Statista research department

Dot Walsh

Dot Walsh is a Peace Chaplain. Shi is also host of Oneness and Wellness, a cable TV show from Dedham, Mass.She is dedicated to changing the world with peace and love.

Note from Kathie MM: Pegean says, Now’s your chance to get it right. Be the candle, be the light. Be the beacon, be the dove. Be the voice of peace and love.

Hope Will Never Be Silent

Posted on by kathiemm

By Abby Zimet, Further columnist

Harvey Milk

A belated heartfelt happy birthday to Harvey Milk, killed in 1978 for daring to come out of the closet, be who he was and insist on his rights, who would have turned 89 on Wednesday. To commemorate this year’s Harvey Milk Day, established in 2010 by his nephew Stuart Milk and the Harvey Milk Foundation, the California Senate unanimously passed a resolution honoring “his critical role in creating the modern LGBT movement” and a legacy that “left an indelible mark on the history of our nation.” Born May 22, 1930, Milk was a middle-class Jewish kid from New York who played football, joined the Navy, worked on Wall Street and for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign before finding himself a new American Dream – reinvention.

In 1977, he became the first openly gay elected official in California – and one of the first in the country – when he won a spot on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. At the still-onerous time, Anita Bryant was vowing to “Save Our Children” and John Briggs was pushing a ballot to ban gay and lesbian teachers, a measure Milk helped defeat by tirelessly debating Briggs around the state. “If I turned around every time I was called a faggot,” he once said, “I’d be walking backwards, and I don’t want to go backwards.” In these similarly dark times, his life-giving message resonates more than ever:  “You stand up and fight.”

His triumphal election, and the bravery and ultimate acceptance it represented, inspired many others to follow suit. “It’s not my victory, it’s yours and yours and yours,” a joyful Milk said to supporters when he was sworn in for the $9,500 a year job. “If a gay can win, it means there is hope the system can work for all minorities…I will fight to give those people who have walked away, hope, so that those people will walk back in. You’ve gotta give ’em hope.” In his year of service, Milk helped pass the country’s first gay rights ordinance, which in turn sparked a series of vital, legally mandated LGBTQ rights, including to same-sex marriage.

Anne Kronenberg, his last campaign manager, said of the exuberant, tenacious Milk, “He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it, for real, for all of us.” Given who he was and what he was doing out in the hate-filled world, he also knew he could meet a violent end. Shortly before Dan White killed him, along with Mayor George Moscone for supporting him, Milk wrote a last will and testament. “If a bullet should enter my brain,” he wrote, “let that bullet destroy every closet door.” Always, he insisted, “Hope will never be silent.”

After his assassination, friend and colleague Cleve Jones wrote movingly of seeing Milk’s dead body on the marble floor in City Hall: “All I could think was, It’s over, it’s all over. But then the sun went down and the people began to gather. Hundreds, thousands, and then tens of thousands of people came to Castro Street — Harvey’s street — and began the long, silent march down Market Street to City Hall. We were men and women of all ages, races, and backgrounds, gay and straight alike, and as we filled the Civic Center plaza with the light of our candles, I knew that I was wrong: It wasn’t over, it was just beginning.”

Published on Common Dreams May 24, 2019

Note: From Kathie MM: Harvey Milk is a profile in moral engagement and a beacon in darkening times. Don’t just speak out your hope. Act on it.

When will they ever learn?

Posted on by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

I cannot even say those words (“When will they ever learn?”) without Pete Seeger’s ballad, “Where have all the flowers gone,” flooding my brain. We had such optimism in the sixties, despite the vile and catastrophic assassinations of JFK , MLK,, and RFK, such hope that people would study war no more.  But the current era is more bloodthirsty and terrifying than ever as the government, the people behind the government, the arms industry, the NRA, and other war profiteers promote and benefit from deadly weapons and the sacking of lands far from our shores.

As is typical of bullies, those responsible for sending our young men and women to kill civilians (that’s who almost all the victims are) refuse to take responsibility for their devastating assaults on human beings and environments.  If the power brokers learned any lessons from Vietnam, it was how better to cover up dirty deeds and blame their victims for the violence unleashed upon them.

The Sacking of Falujah: A People’s History by Ross Caputi (a frequent guest author on Engaging Peace), Richard Hil, and  Donna Mulhearn takes you behind the scenes of a more recent major bloodletting by the U.S. The book  is not only engrossing, but dares to speak truth to power, to describe events as experienced at Falujah not only by the three authors but by dozens of Iraqis who suffered from the second invasion of Iraq and its endlessly deadly aftermath.

Reading this book will not only provide you with hitherto unavailable information about the sacking of Falujah by the US and “Coalition Forces” but also about the events that led up to it—events that the US government is not eager to share or take responsibility for—and the role of that sacking and related events in the rise of ISIS. It will get you thinking about sociocide and urbacide, and information wars. It may also motivate you to think more about our government’s current rhetoric concerning “enemies” in other parts of the world and its threats regarding the selected enemies of today’s regime. You know who the current targets are. Can you ask your Congresspeople to resist complicity?

To view a video of my interview with Ross Caputi about The Sacking of Falujah, go to https://youtu.be/H7KatbFAI6U and send us your comments on this and all engaging peace posts.