Please, Never Give Up

Activsts walk during the 50 Miles More march in Worcester, Massachusetts, on 23 August.
Photograph: Scott Eisen/Getty Images

While our attention is overwhelmed by U.S. mainstream media reports about Trump associates’ felony convictions, a major story playing out in Massachusetts has gone largely unnoticed.

Thank God for the UK’s, The Guardian.

Why is this important? Each day our youth realize it’s up to them to create a nonviolent, compassionate, life-affirming USA. They haven’t yet lost their dreams and hopes for rational gun regulation.

I hope they never tire, never surrender, never give up.

Here’s the story:

'This isn't just Parkland': student activists march to confront Smith & Wesson, Luke O'Neil, The Guardian, 24 Aug 2018.

“Activists across Massachusetts came together for the local chapter of 50 Miles More to challenge the arms manufacturer at its Springfield headquarters.”

“Student activists continued to make progress on Friday on a 50-mile march that will bring them to the headquarters of gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson in Springfield, Massachusetts this weekend.”

“The group has two messages it hopes to deliver to Smith & Wesson. First is a request that the company cease the manufacture of weapons outlawed under the 2004 Massachusetts Assault Weapons Ban.”

“Smith & Wesson produces weapons that are illegal in Massachusetts then ships them throughout the country, and those [guns] take peoples’ lives,” Eder said. “That needs to stop.”

“The group would also like to see the company donate $5m to research violence involving its weapons.”

“I hope Smith & Wesson realize they can become a responsible gun manufacturer. They could start making guns with finger print [technology] again, for example.”

“He (David Hogg) and the group have no problem with the second amendment, they all agreed. They simply take issue with how it’s regulated.”

“We don’t have universal background checks; we need to invest in violence intervention programs,” Hogg said. “These shootings don’t just happen in high schools, they happen every day. We need people like the president to realize this is not just Parkland, this is Boston, this is all the different cities that we’re with.”

Asked what he wanted Smith & Wesson to hear when the group arrives on Sunday, Brody said it was “OK to be a gun manufacturer and be against gun violence.

“You can be a part of the solution. If you’re truly who you say you are, you haven’t acted like it. It’s time to step up and be the first gun manufacturer to say you’re against gun violence, and mean it and show it.” 

-more-

Bruce Springsteen - No Surrender - 2004

Hope Grows for Adult Gun Sanity

Photo by Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP

Not for a second, while I was in high school in the late '60s, did I fear that my life was in danger from some person walking into my high school with a gun. If I had, I would have been one among many of my friends demanding that our "responsible adults" do something to control guns and stop the madness.

Yesterday, youth from more than 2,500 schools across the U.S. did just that.

With our youth rests the hope that U.S. adults will at last become responsible for gun control sanity.

Here's the story:

Student walkouts sweep the US, Meg Wagner and Brian Ries, CNN, 20 Apr 2018

Today they walked. Here's what they want lawmakers to do next.

Today's National Student Walkout, while drawing momentum from February's mass shooting at South Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, marked the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in which two gunmen killed 12 students and a teacher.

But organizers said the movement doesn't stop today, and they're encouraging young people to push for legislation at the state level if Congress doesn't act.

"The federal government can set standards and practices that apply to all states around gun safety. But states have the option of passing additional measures to protect their own residents from gun violence," the organizers' website says.

Students are calling for several measures, including...

• Banning assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and bump stocks
• Mandating universal background checks
• Placing a minimum age of 21 on all gun purchases
• Implementing waiting periods between a gun purchase and gun transfers
• Allowing families to petition a court to remove guns from individuals at risk of injuring themselves

There have been 20 school shootings in 2018

New York City students hold a "die in" in Washington Square Park. Photo: Kyle O’Leary

Silently Sacrificing our Children

Photo credit: Johanne Rahaman for HuffPost

We’ve done nothing since 4 May 1970.*

That’s when our leaders sanctioned the murder of four students and wounding of nine others. 

Many other students died before KSU, thousands died after, and more die nearly every day.

To this very day our leaders are willing to sacrifice our youth for their own benefit.

Sculptor George Segal’s, In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac

It’s a story as old as Abraham and Isaac - the one told in the Bible. Except, today, we the Abraham (s) are not killing our children to prove our love to God. We are killing them, letting them be slaughtered… for… what? Some false sense of security? For money? Or, is it because we really don’t love them? Better our children die than we die?

The Kent State Massacre was a tipping point that sparked outrage on hundreds of college and high school campuses throughout the nation. May 4, 1970 pushed “clean-shaven-short-haircut, youth” into protesting for fear of losing their lives while at school.

Because their kids were fearful of “death on campus”, a multitude of “silent majority” parents and grandparents became fearful, too. Together they melded into a tsunami of change that forced the heartless, bought-out elected officials and unelected war hawks into withdrawing from Vietnam.

Still, the kids made it happen.

We were the kids then.

Future voters at South Broward High School have left classes to protest for better gun control. pic.twitter.com/AgpKRsrNwI

— Sebastian Murdock (@SebastianMurdoc) February 16, 2018

Today, our grandkids are forced to fill the leadership and moral vacuum we have neglected.

Please, dear God. Please help these young people. Please give them the strength and determination to do what we have failed to do. Please help them stop the carnage.

“I was hiding in a closet for 2 hours,” Novell said. “It was about guns. You weren’t there, you don’t know how it felt. Guns give these disgusting people the ability to kill other human beings. This IS about guns and this is about all the people who had their life abruptly ended because of guns.” - Carly Novell, 17-year-old Stoneman Douglas high student.

Florida High School Students Stage Walkout To Protest Gun Violence, Ryan Grenoble and Sebastian Murdock, Huffington Post, 16 Feb 2018.

“Now is the exact time to talk about gun control, say students from a high school near Parkland.”

“They’re furious about political stonewalling, and most of them aren’t yet old enough to vote.”

“Two days after a gunman used an assault-style rifle to kill 17 people at a nearby school, the students of South Broward High School protested in solidarity. Just a couple of dozen miles down the road in Parkland, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was still sealed off as investigators pored over the horrors inside.”

“About 50 teenagers gathered on the street Friday, rallying around the common causes of gun control and school safety ? two issues politicians continue to ignore even though polls show most Americans support them.” Please go here for more of the story.

*Why the Kent State Massacre Matters Today

Excerpt from: When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die, Ron Baker, Downriver USA, 24 Feb 2017.

In the Trumpian era of “alternative facts” and demagoguery we are ever slipping and sliding deeper and deeper into our own Fascist-American quicksand where our leaders mislead, confuse issues and make up “facts” to feed their narcissistic addiction and never-sated power and wealth appetite.

Kent State offers one more jarring lesson for us here, as well, built on a foundation of innocent blood. It is one which the KSU administration displayed for all to see and hear, if only we had eyes to see and ears to hear (a wish I fervently make for Dan Adamini, disgraced former Marquette County Republican Party secretary and "conservative" radio commentator). That is their decision not to accept sculptor George Segal’s In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac. 

Segal’s sculpture is a contemporary version of Abraham and Isaac “in an allegory for the May 4, 1970, tragedy at Kent State University. A poignant visualization of humankind's struggle between ideology and paternal love, it mirrors the conflict that led to the death of four students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard.”

In other words Segal is mirroring our willingness to sacrifice our own children to our gods, whoever or whatever they are. I fear many will continue the practice, cheerfully following the whims of our current president.

After commissioning it in 1977, Kent State refused the sculpture in 1977, saying that it “depicted violence”.

It is now on display outside of the Princeton University Chapel as part of the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection, funded by a partial gift of the Mildred Andrews Fund.

Please go here for Paul Keane’s illuminating and thought provoking words about Segal’s Abraham and Isaac. 

Lies Too Big To Fail – Kent State PDF version