Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

I think that’s a little harsh on “the movement” because as much in-fighting as there is, there are common understandings and coalitions that bring people that aren’t _living politics in their blood_ not just to the ballot box but to marches like today. I think of all my friends marching, only a few have a bunch of aggro ideas about what the puritanically right stances are, and they’re still marching hand in hand with people who just want movement on the issue.

Having well-defined stances is important and you should always be a little critical of your chosen officials when they stray, but it’s all nuanced. For gun violence, I think there are definite experts and few people are going to bang on rhetorical hard-line stances if we see real movement in policy, even not ideal. Anything would be great at this point.

Trying to imagine having one's first public speaking gig be in front of basically a million+ people and NOT throwing up, frankly.

i felt anxious enough on her behalf just watching it to throw up tbh

A friend on FB:

We should be able to hold multiple truths at the same time. One, that the young people today had more nuance and courage in professing obvious differences and pledging solidarity - authentically - than mostly all adults with the hot takes. Can you imagine if being called out to identify your privilege was met with the humility that we have witnessed from these young folks today, not self-flagellating despair among adult activists? I don’t know, because I honestly haven’t witnessed it. I am sure there was a lot that went on behind the scenes, but to an outsider, it seemed like genuine learning.

Second, the gigantic rift between liberal white led gun reform orgs and black led gun violence orgs is decades old, and the former have an obvious leg up to influence post-Parkland policy directives because racism is real and opportunism is rampant. Nothing from the students’ Guardian policy manifesto editorial (which is mostly bad!) is any different from what mainstream GVP orgs have been advocating for, for years. These are the same orgs that responded to Pulse with No Fly No Buy. Their politics are no surprise. Why anyone expects the Neera Tanden variety of Dems to come around to the greater truth is still a mystery to me.

In summary, the policy world is a ruthless battlefield and we cannot expect young people to write the solutions for a radical new world within the month (or be prepared to challenge bad policy with better one) when we’ve been barely hanging on ourselves. They are fortunate to have met kids that deal with this every single day in New Orleans and DC and Chicago - all we should hope for is that their relationships are lasting and transformative, and surpass the strength of *all* the vultures.

Follow some amazing folks at Community Justice Reform Coalition to start - and give the kids a chance.

re mccartney, the march also went right by the dakota

and to be fair he was approached by a reporter, not like he tweeted it or shouted it from a bullhorn. It does come off a bit gauche, but that's Paul. didn't know about the chants. w/e

I cried looking at photos of the march & signs last night. This is the most encouraging thing to happen in America since Obama was elected 10 years ago imo.

And the fact that so many of the kids marching told reporters they still don't think anything is going to change, yet they're still out there marching, is testament to their will & bravery. it's really incredible.

nothing's going to change this year. but 19 years after Columbine, the general, majority tone of the US is likely to become accepted as knowing that gun control is sensible and necessary.

The built-in two-party system means that even if a house or houses flip in November, we're stuck with the Democratic Party's ineffectuality. But there's (cross fingers) another two years of activism in which they can realise that people want to hear a better message from them.

The NRA exist only because of money, and the Georgian legislature's $30 million reaction to Delta cutting a discount for THIRTEEN PEOPLE shows how shook they are. I painted a sign and marched yesterday: my straight-up "abolish all guns" position is not going to mean anything, but smart teenagers being given the opportunity to speak will, and is. They haven't been heard after any of the hundreds of school shootings in the last decades, but these ones, who have lived in that environment their whole lives, finally are. The voices shouting them down sound more like murderous idiots than usual because the kids are being heard, instead of just the idiots. That's the change now, and it can lead to changes in both people and policy.

OTM it is so inspiring

They haven't been heard after any of the hundreds of school shootings in the last decades, but these ones, who have lived in that environment their whole lives, finally are.

this was the first thing I thought about after the Parkland kids started getting attention: Sandy Hook was 5 years ago, some of these kids were still in elementary school when that happened. Every year it got worse and worse. I'm imagining going to school now and having lockdown drills taken as seriously as fire drills. Fucking horrible

there was a 6-year-old survivor of sandy hook who is now an 11-year-old marcher

my eight month old nephew has had a lockdown drill at his daycare (which is right by northwestern’s campus). it makes me think of the weathered air raid drill signs on my elementary school’s walls and how they seemed like an abstraction even during THE DAY AFTER era

I thought this was a pretty thorough and empathetic left critique of the published demands

...in moments such as this one, or the massacres at Columbine, or Virginia Tech, or the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, or Sutherland Springs in Texas, or Las Vegas that the violent roots of the American experiment we have been all too willing to ignore begins to print upon our collective psyche. The massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is one more instance where the outline sharpens a bit more, and the obvious becomes a bit more so to a few more people.

What the students of Parkland — in coalition with the students and victims of American violence both here and abroad — are attempting to do is nothing less than the cutting back of the bloody roots of the American project. That is a tall ask of kids who should be preparing for college, going to their proms or ring dances, and gearing up for another summer lost to the laughter and love that characterizes what it means to be young.

It is inevitable that mistakes will be made given the nature of this undertaking. Much as we have learned through them, these young activists and leaders need to learn themselves, and we should be open with our knowledge and our hearts.

https://thesouthlawn.org/2018/03/25/like-our-lives-depend-on-it/

a shame the writer used "mistakes will be made"

sic otm. Politicians that are canny follow the winds, and these kids have changed the fucking weather.

i know that the NRA tends to use mass shootings as a chance to really rally the troops to their belief in guns being the solution but i find it hard to believe they'll continue to survive as an influential group as these continue to occur. which seems inevitable.

Has this been posted elsewhere? Because fuck this clown.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/mar/26/eagles-of-death-metal-jesse-hughes-march-for-our-lives-bataclan

ugh

"fatherbadass"

Unbelievable piece of shit tbh, the Rudy Giuliani of musicians.

Also coincidentally I know the guy who made the cartoon he shared up there. The one on the right is obviously altered but the original sentiment is the same, basically. Fucking stupid.

A useful reminder that being a survivor doesn't automatically afford you the ethical high ground.

he's totally misusing instagram too, what a savage

That cartoonist also tried to recruit me for l*ndm*rk forum once.

I'm almost certain we had lockdown drills just as often as fire drills when I was a child, even before Columbine?

I don't remember lockdown drills in high school -- fire and tornado are what I remember (2000s)

that said they've sure started now http://www.greensboro.com/news/north_carolina/alamance-county-schools-to-hold-lockdown-drills-today/article_9424ee7e-9a04-51e2-94a1-08cfe682bc8a.html

I had I think 2 lockdown drills in all my time in grade school (I graduated HS in 2011)

vs. dozens and dozens of fire drills

I was a kid in the 80s, & we had nuclear war drills frequently

now my kids (not in the usa) have school terrorism drills

my nuclear drill was listening to "Land of Confusion"!

yeah. I watched parts of Atomic Cafe on USA's Night Flight, that was about it.

you were in Florida too, no? coulda just been a P1nell@s county thing

xp

Once my first grade teacher thought we needed a little quiet time after lunch so we put our heads on our desks and listened to No Jacket Required. My daughter is in first grade and had her first lockdown drill earlier this year.

we had tornado drills a lot. that was about it.

a friend of mine shared an Instagram post where this guy commented on Emma Gonzalez's page or something with "I can't wait until I'm reading your names in the obituary section". his username is "the last c0nserv@t!ve" (googleproofed) and at the top of the page, he has a blurb stating he's a proud Christian, made perfect through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

I guess the main reason this is so jarring to me is that I went to church in the South in the 80s and 90s - one a Fundamentalist, the other a Protestant (Methodist). And yes, most of those people had horrible opinions about homosexuality, abortion, patriarchal values, etc. But they were a compassionate group of people. Someone posting something like that would likely get them they weren't welcome at the church anymore. And not just the officials who have to be professional, even the congregation of my Fundie church would have said that was gross.

Like there were still decency lines that wouldn't be crossed. I feel like the main difference is that those churches I went to, they found their political views through the lens of their religion. As American Christianity has been increasingly politicized, though, there are many who found their religion through the lens of their politics. They view American conservatism and its gun fetishism an extension of the religion, like somehow the two have always been intertwined. A lot of these people don't go to church often or even know much about the teachings but just affix the label to themselves because they're a conservative, ergo they must also be Christian. So then they view attacks on the 2nd Amendment as an attack on religion and deem these kinds of inflammatory reactions as ok. Which is scary af, being that the recent mailbox bomber was basically a radicalized Christian.

I'm seriously afraid of Christian terrorism increasing - not to levels of what other countries have, but enough to where people are on edge. it doesn't help that sometimes church officials are part of the abhorrent behavior, or if they aren't, do little to curtail it. It's funny how Muslims are expected to acknowledge and condemn their mujahideen problem on what feels like a daily basis, but Christians won't acknowledge their own growing problem and hide behind shitty "No True Scotsman" defenses. and when they do, it's unheeded - Evangelicals turned on the Pope ffs since he dared to buck conservative politics.

I know none of this is booming but it just weighs me down every day. this cult-like behavior....so gross.

I'm seriously afraid of Christian terrorism increasing - not to levels of what other countries have

What countries?

oh

WOW: Father of Pulse shooter Omar Mateen was longtime FBI informant; that's why prosecutors didn't lock up Mateen after 2013 threats, which might have prevented massacre, lawyers say. https://t.co/xNMnJnsYFp

— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) March 26, 2018

xp - it's not really that jarring. it stops being jarring when one realizes that they have a broad and deep well of human compassion and respect, extended only to the people they think deserve to be alive. if you are not part of the middle-to-upper-class WASP cohort or if you deviate it from any way (sexuality, disability, politics) then these people do not really consider you human, and consider you as making it actively worse for humans just by dint of existing. (and yet generally speaking, the fundamentalist conservative platform does not support voluntary euthanasia.)

(by that last, I often am deeply resentful because the general thrust of GOP policy, via medical insurance, foreign policy, job acquisition and longevity, and the like is that they would prefer it if many people were just dead, and if someone does in fact die, then they view that as justice being served, as God's plan or whatnot. (the latter is more common the more Calvinist a church is, though asking your church leaders how Calvinist they are is a quick way to get kicked out of the church.) but they never actually admit this, despite clearly thinking it.)

What I’ve been saying.

Rod Dreher is mad:

To clarify (because this isn’t clear to many commenters): I support tightening gun laws. I supported this before Parkland. I support it in spite of this media-glorified movement. I do not support this movement. I was indifferent to mildly positive about the movement, but I now believe that its intentions are to smear anybody who disagrees as an accessory to mass murder. Same as the LGBT movement smeared those who disagreed, especially when it comes to LGBT programs in schools, as causing suicides.

David Hogg is emerging as a skinny young Robespierre, so filled with righteousness and certainty, and stone-cold purity. I have no problem at all with him criticizing Marco Rubio or any other lawmaker, and criticizing them strongly. But what that kid said goes way beyond that. And he’s being cheered on by adults who know better, but who find him useful. What a disgusting little creep David Hogg is — but not as disgusting as the grown-ups who are using him for their own cause.

He should be careful about invoking Robespierre or he’ll end up on a list

These people are sad

starting to realize theyve lost the room?

they haven't, though, is the problem. they have complete and total control of the room. no real change has come out of all of this and most likely won't.

(this whole thing is more depressing to me than anything -- to the extent that I dreaded shootings in school it's because I knew that if I were to be shot then no one would give a shit about it. most people probably would secretly have been relieved. still is the case, really.)

it's also why I really... actually kind of hated the big speech at the rally. this is the list of people who died: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/15/586095587/17-people-died-in-the-parkland-shooting-here-are-their-names

and here is the speech:

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805330/emma-gonzalez-fight-for-your-lives-before-it-s-someone-else-s-job

A couple of people are memorialized with little anecdotes like "would never call Kira Miss Sunshine"). A couple of people are mentioned just offhand. One boy isn't mentioned at all. (Almost every news outlet covering the rally said all 17 victims were mentioned, but you can clearly count 16.) And it's just, like, why? Was there not space to mention everyone else's friends? Is the symbolic value of getting your speech to exactly six minutes really worth someone's mom wondering why their son wasn't mentioned?

Basically, I can't shake the suspicion that there was some kind of decision about whose lives made for sufficiently good content. Children's lives. It goes without saying that kids should not have to worry about being shot in school, but kids also should not have to worry about whether anyone would eulogize them if they were. Because that sure as hell is a worry I had throughout high school, frequently (more so in college, since there actually was a murder).

one of the victims was a non-student, no?