Power to the (young) people

Image by Lalo Alcaraz

As all of you likely know, last Wednesday, on February 14th, a 19-year-old shot and killed 17 people and wounded 14 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.   This school shooting is the 18th in 2018, which, as Amy Goodman points out, means that there has been a school shooting every 60 hours so far this year. The ongoing death toll is painfully large: since 2012, when 26 people–including 20 first graders–were killed in Sandy Hook Elementary School, there have been at least 239 school shootings nationwide and 138 deaths.

While young people are vulnerable to gun-related injury and death in many spaces beyond schools, due to the general proliferation of guns in U.S. society ^[1], school shootings provoke a painful cycle that we’ve now seen many times: outrage and sorrow; thoughts and prayers; calls for more gun control; no change in gun control laws; shooting forgotten till the next one happens.

What might make a difference and break the cycle in this case is that the young people directly affected by this latest shooting are organizing and demanding change, and they’re being joined by young people all over the country. Emma Gonzalez, whose impassioned speech inspired the photo above, called out politicians for their inaction and declared:

We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because, just as David said, we are going to be the last mass shooting. Just like Tinker v. Des Moines, we are going to change the law. That’s going to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas in that textbook and it’s going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students.

Students have organized themselves to ask for change on the state and federal level: marching to Tallahassee, having a die-in at the White House, and walkouts and rallies on February 21st, the one-week anniversary of the Parkland shooting. More actions have also been planned: rally on the March 14th (one month anniversary of the shooting); a March on Washington on March 24th; and another walkout on April 20th (April 20th, 1999, was when the Columbine school massacre occurred.) There are a number of sites that are working to keep track of all the planned actions; March for our Lives’ FB page is one of those.

We are inspired by and stand with these students as we stand with all the young people who have long been organizing for change in their schools, including demanding more equitable funding; safe and supportive spaces for transgender and gender non-conforming youth; and culturally relevant curriculum including critical ethnic studies courses.

Footnotes

1.  As Lindsay Nichols, the federal policy director for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, puts it: “Children are also at risk in concerts, in movie theaters, and often very times at home. We have a epidemic of murder-suicides in this country, that are often preceded by domestic violence. And we need to look at that in that larger context and remember that schools are just—are actually, overall, relatively safe places for children to be, when you talk about the larger impact on children and on all members of our society.

P.S. If you’re a teacher or a professor, you most likely have your retirement funds invested with TIAA-CREF. Please consider signing this petition to ask TIAA-CREF to divest from gun manufacturers.

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Standing with and Understanding Standing Rock

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Decolonizing Thanksgiving

The last time we wrote about what’s happening at Standing Rock and the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, the unarmed water protectors (the term the Indigenous folks there use for themselves) had been attacked by dogs and pepper spray. We are writing about what’s happening there again after more violent attacks on the water protectors this past week with water cannons and concussion grenades. What’s happening there has been getting more mainstream coverage, assuming The View is relatively mainstream. We wanted today to highlight two resources to learn more about what’s happening in Standing Rock currently and to understand the historical, social, and cultural context of the protests:

1. Dr. Adrienne Keene visits our favorite podcast to speak about her visit to Standing Rock (before the water cannons and concussion grenades) and describes what’s happening there and provides a larger context for the protests, explaining terms such as settler colonialism. Dr. Keene writes the blog, Native Appropriations, which you should all check out. (Anita was lucky enough to attend her convocation talk earlier this month at Carleton.) (Adriana is jealous, but plans to watch the video soon.)
2. Check out the #NoDAPL syllabus created by a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and activists to understand the current resistance against the pipeline in the long history of colonialism and racism.

Education matters, but action should follow. Here are concrete ways for you to take action to support the water protectors:

1. Call North Dakota governor Jack Dalrymple at 701-328-2200. See phone scripts here.

2. Donate items from the Sacred Stone Camp Supply List: http://sacredstonecamp.org/supply-list/

3. Call the White House at (202) 456-1111 or (202) 456-1414.

4. Contribute to the Sacred Stone Camp Legal Defense Fund: https://fundrazr.com/d19fAf

5. Call the Army Corps of Engineers and demand that they reverse the permit: (202) 761-5903

6. Sign petitions asking President Obama to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Here’s the latest – https://act.credoaction.com/sign/NoDAPL

7. Write to the 17 banks funding the pipeline and consider moving your accounts if you have any at these banks:

http://www.commondreams.org/…/how-contact-17-banks-funding-…