What Will it Take?

 

Remember back in 2016, not long before the presidential election, when that bit of footage was found and re-played with Donald Trump saying you (“you” meaning celebrities and/or powerful men) could grab a woman by the pussy? Remember how outraged we all were? And fed up? Remember how women finally started talking to each other about all the times they’d been violated in some way by men, whether verbally or physically? And women across the nation made pink pussy hats? And thousands upon thousands of women came out and marched to show support for one another? To say, ‘We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore’?

It changed things. Women changed things, changed the conversation or began it, or whatever, but all across the country, it was no longer okay for men to behave badly, and if they did, they might meet swift and dire consequences for their actions. Bravo, ladies.

If you’re a bit older (old enough to remember the 1980’s), the name Candy Lightner might not ring a bell, but you probably do remember MADD, the organization she founded after her thirteen-year-old daughter, Cari, was hit by a drunk driver and killed. MADD—Mother’s Against Drunk Driving—started out as many women’s movements did back then—with an uphill battle and a great deal of derision on the part of the (male-dominated) press. And yet, that small group of angry mothers who had lost loved ones to vehicular violence grew and grew into a nation-wide organization that is still active today.

Those women, in raising their united voices, raised our awareness of the horrific lack of legal consequences for drunk driving, and more importantly, they lobbied the courts and legislators doggedly for years until stiffer penalties were finally introduced, thus saving thousands upon thousands of lives. Bravo, ladies.

Women, when we are angry enough, when we are fed up enough, can be a formidable force.

Case in point: Rosa Parks. (Ms. Parks, by the way, did not sit in the “white” section of the bus. She sat in the “colored” section. Why didn’t she stand when the bus driver demanded she give up her seat to a white man? Because, she said, “I was tired.” One can only imagine how exhausting life was for a Black woman in Alabama in 1955.)

Which brings me to another case in point: Mamie Till-Mobley. She was the mother of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old boy who was abducted from his uncle’s home by three white men because his behavior had been perceived as inappropriate toward a white woman. He was tortured for hours, then murdered, his body dumped in a river. During that night of torment, Till’s body was mutilated and his face beaten so severely he was rendered unrecognizable. And yet, Mamie Till-Mobley insisted that her son be given an open-casket funeral. Why? In her words: “I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby.” People flocked to the funeral. The press came. Women fainted when they saw Emmett Till’s mangled face. Photographs were taken, and the images eventually shared across the country.

Mamie Till-Mobley’s courage forced people around the country—around the globe—to confront the atrocities of racism. Bravo, Ms. Mobley. Your son, and your love for him, will never be forgotten.

In one of my many conversations this week with other women—other mothers—about the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a friend said, “All these funerals now, all these small caskets…. I heard a reporter suggest that we need another Mamie Till-Mobley. Maybe we need to have open casket funerals for these children, for all the children who die as a result of gun violence. Maybe that would turn the tide. Maybe if people saw that, it would make it real enough for them to vote for politicians who support gun control reform. I don’t know. It’s awful to think about. But maybe that’s what it will take.”

I’m asking the mothers, the grandmothers, the sisters, the aunts, the teachers: What will it take? What do we have to do to turn the tide? We already know that we can be a force to be reckoned with if we unite with a common purpose, if we are so angry, we refuse to accept the status quo. Are we there yet? Have we reached that “mad as hell” point yet? Or will it take just one more slaughter of innocent children to have us all out marching?

 

The lie all mothers tell

 

I’ve been working on a post about something that happened when I was hiking in Oak Glen last weekend. But then the shooting happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and I haven’t wanted to finish that. Because I’ve been thinking about this:

Bear with me. It’s a story.

When my kids were little, I loved that I could stay home. I did my writing when they were at school or sleeping, and I was there when they came home, hot or tired or rain-soaked or weepy or jubilant.

After my divorce, I had to go back to school full time in order to get my degree and start teaching. I tried to plan all my classes so that I could get the kids to school, get to campus for classes, then get back home before they did. But the university was far from home, and putting that much distance between myself and my children cranked my anxiety level way up. I will confess that there were some days I sat in my car in the parking lot after I arrived on campus, reluctant to give my attention fully to the day’s classes when my children were nearly an hour’s drive away. Keep in mind, this was in the days before cell phones. If something had happened to one of my kids while I was in class, someone would have a difficult if not impossible time reaching me. I had no family members, no support network living nearby. There were times when I had to fight the urge to turn around and go home just to be there. Just in case.

In those times, I calmed myself with self-talk that went something like this: The kids are okay. They’re all in school. They are protected, and they will be safe there until you pick them up.

Think of that in light of the danger kids face all over the nation in schools today.

My children are grown now, and for the most part, their children are, too; I have only one grandchild in elementary school. He lives in Arizona, another state that, like Texas, has very few restrictions regarding the sale and ownership of firearms. He’ll be ten in October, the same age as most of the children in the Robb Elementary School massacre. I have another decade or so to worry about his safety.

My daughter and her husband both teach high school here in Southern California. While our state has much more restrictive gun laws than Arizona (another reason to love Cali), that didn’t stop a student in 2019 from pulling a semi-automatic handgun out of his backpack and shooting five people at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, a quiet community much like the area where my daughter and her husband teach. Of course there have been other school shootings in California as well.

While I watched news coverage in the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting, I just kept thinking of all the moms. All the mothers in Uvalde who sent their children to school that morning and told themselves the lie all mothers have to tell themselves now, regardless of where they live in this country: My children will be safe at school. Bad things don’t happen here. Not in our town. Not to our kids.

PSA

I'm interrupting my previously scheduled blog post (about my further adventures in Salinas) to bring you a public service announcement. It's the same one I've made before... but bear with me.

About an hour south of Salinas is a small community known as King. In it, just off Highway 101, is a fairly large truck stop, and in the middle of the truck stop is a fairly small eatery called the Wild Horse Cafe. (Thus the rearing horse in the photo above.) This was where I stopped for breakfast at 8:00 this morning. You know when you walk in the door of a cafe of this type that if you see plenty of battered trucks outside and plenty of dusty boots dragged up to the counter inside, you're going to get some mighty fine breakfast (which I did, quickly and with salsa on the side).

You also know, in a place like this, you're probably going to see signs like this:

This picture says it all: "God, Guns & Guts Made America Free/Let's Keep It That Way" over a background of our flag, a bald eagle and a man toting a long-barreled gun.

I had already become aware of the shooting in Dayton when I checked my phone at 5:30a.m. for news. Since my son now lives in Dayton, Ohio, you can imagine what reading that news did to my heart rate, which only slowed down a little after he immediately responded to my text message to say he was okay. He followed that with, "Yeah, it's crazy; I've been to that bar before." That's when the tears came. No, it wasn't my son this time. But it could've been. And certainly, it was somebody else's son, somebody else's daughter.

By the time I sat down to coffee, scrambled eggs and home fries, I was determined to take as many deep breaths as might be necessary to get through my breakfast without crying in a small diner surrounded by strangers. Then the gentleman sitting in the booth behind me suddenly jumped up and shouted, "There's been another mass shooting! This one's in Dayton!" He held his cell phone aloft and looked around for a response, whereupon the gentleman sitting one booth away replied loudly, "And they wanna take our guns away? Not mine they don't."

Sigh. 

Not satisfied with that response, the phone wielding gentleman then approached three weathered crop beaters sitting at the counter and showed them the news. One of them glanced at the phone, then leaned into the anxious man's side and began to tell him quietly that he could not trust at all what he saw on the news. "A lot of times they just make that stuff up," he said emphatically.

I wish, oh how I wish, that I were making this up, that this were a fictional story that just came to me while I sat in that isolated diner losing my appetite.

Nope, not a chance. It happened just like that, folks. The first man finally sat down and continued to stare at his phone, occasionally blurting out further details as he continued reading about the carnage.

And I sat. I remained anchored. Time ticked by. What I wanted to say was, "No one wants to take your guns, sir, unless you have an AK-style weapon that you're planning on using to kill people who don't look or think like you." But I didn't. Like our lawmakers, I simply sat and did nothing.

So, since we're still not going to change anything in America in regard to guns, here's my advice:

From now on, whenever you travel to a public place, whether it's a mall or a school or a nightclub or an outdoor concert or a museum, always check for exits when you arrive, as I did this weekend at the Steinbeck Festival. I found the back door of the center easily, saw that it led to an enclosed patio, and determined that, with some effort, I could go up and over the wall if need be.

If you have young children, explain to them that if someone begins shooting, they are not to wait for you, they must run as fast as they can as far as they can away from the gunshots and not stop to look at anything or anyone. You can always be reunited with them later if you manage to survive. If you don't survive, well, the sooner they adjust to someone else looking after them, the better, I suppose.

If you're still of the belief that a man with a gun can be stopped by another man with a gun, please keep in mind that yesterday's shooting occurred in Texas, an "open carry" state. The perpetrator opened fire on women and children and old people. Where were the men with guns to stop him?

Speaking of that, decide in advance if you would really risk your life to save someone or you're just going to run. You'll lose critical seconds being indecisive. I will not forget the interview with the woman in El Paso who said, 'I was trying to help a very elderly woman, but she just couldn't move fast enough, so I left her behind, because the shooter was getting closer.'

I honestly had to ask myself how I would feel if my daughter sacrificed her life to save an old woman, which, believe me, I'm pretty sure she'd do, because she has this thing for old people, and she's pretty badass and stubborn--if she didn't take out the shooter with her teacher voice--"Put that [expletive] gun down right now!"--she'd find a way to help the old woman. But at what price? If the old woman survived, her family would have her for a few more years. If my daughter were killed, she'd be lost to her husband, her children, her eventual grandchildren, and a mother who would never know joy again.

But these are the moral dilemmas we must sort through in advance. Because when the bullets start flying again--and we all know it's only a matter of time before the next mass shooting occurs, maybe in your town, maybe in mine--we will not have time to consider escape routes or reflect upon who is needed more in this life. We will have a handful of seconds to react. We'd best be ready.

March

It's been one busy week around here, so I've had little time to assemble my photos from the March For Our Lives in Riverside, California last Saturday. The one above is one of my favorites. The gentleman holding the sign was there with his wife and his German Shepherd, Molly. He was a kind, soft-spoken man who agreed readily when I asked if I could photograph him and post the picture online. A Vietnam war veteran, he felt very strongly about gun control.

In addition to Molly, there were quite a few other dogs there with their people. Seeing them was a comfort to me.

And while the march was organized and directed by teens (who presented all the wonderful, passionate speeches), there were people of all ages there, including people of all abilities:

A lot of teachers showed up, though there were people from all walks of life:

I was especially proud of these folks from my alma mater, UC Riverside:

And I was especially proud of the kids who came with their moms or dads or both to march. They get it:

The young man featured above is Ben, who made his signs himself. I love that he was forward-thinking enough to suggest that blasters should also not be present in schools.

The sense of camaraderie at these events is palpable. Seriously, you want to just hug everyone there. All 4,000 of them. (That number was the Press-Enterprise estimate of attendees.) 

As was the case with the March for Women in January of 2017, I really had to push myself out of my comfort zone to make the drive and find parking and wander alone toward the courthouse and stand alone (until Ben and his crew joined me, which was a special blessing) and then walk. I'm not a shouter or chanter. I'm really not much of a verbal person at all, preferring to select my words and construct my sentences with caution and care, which writing allows me to do. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and so we must all stand with, walk with, the children and adults who have survived mass shootings. Change will come, carried along by the fervency of these young people. I want to say I participated, even if it is in the smallest way. #NeverAgain.

Dick's et al

At some point in the next week, I will buy something from Dick's Sporting Goods. I'm not sure what I'll get... a new yoga mat, perhaps, or some new sneakers. I would hope anyone who feels passionately about the need for gun control reform will do the same.

If you missed it, in my previous post I suggested that making changes to the gun culture in the United States will be a long and arduous process, but we can bring about those changes, just as we changed the societal norm of smoking a few decades ago. Instead of sweeping legislation (that I would love to see but seems improbable since so many politicians are more concerned with saving their seats instead of saving lives), we can turn the ship around by means of small, incremental steps with the goal in mind of not overturning The Sacred Second Amendment but rather limiting accessibility to mass-kill weapons and accessories and doing more thorough background checks (just for starters).

Last weekend, MetLife, a company that offers life insurance and other financial products, was the first to come forward and say, "We will no longer offer discounts to NRA members." Company executives stated that this policy change was made because "We value all our customers" (emphasis mine). Aaaaand BOOM, just like that, within 24 hours, a long list of companies followed, including major airlines, car rental companies, software companies, and so on. When I travel to Missouri in June, I will be reviewing that list of companies to find the airline and car rental agency I will patronize as a way of supporting their courage to do something, however small.

This morning, the CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods made an appearance on Good Morning America to announce that the company will no longer sell assault style rifles or high capacity magazines, nor will they sell a firearm to persons under the age of 21. Bravo. And so to support the company's brave step (because, yep, they know it will--at least temporarily while some folks throw temper tantrums at not being able to purchase all the pretty shiny destructive toys they want--reduce sales and result in a decrease in stock value), I will be buying something—anything—from the Dick's in Upland, California when I head out that way later this week.

Small steps... these are small steps. But they are similar to decisions made by owners of chain and independent restaurants a few decades ago that banned smoking inside the restaurant. Everyone said those businesses would lose business. In fact, studies have shown that restaurants and bars that have banned smoking (in some states, you can still light up inside your local pub) have not seen any decrease in revenue.

I imagine Dick's will see a small blip in sales... maybe... but maybe good-hearted folks around the country will do as I am doing, decide the kids need new sneakers this month or some cleats for Little League coming up in the spring or a really nice hoodie from The North Face or Field and Stream. Spread the word. Maybe we can make that happen, and maybe Dick's will see, in its next quarter financial report, that sales actually increased after this critically important, potentially life-saving decision.

Wouldn't that be cool? 

Smokescreen

When I was a kid, everybody smoked. If you're my age, you remember. Mom, Dad, Grandma all sat on the couch puffing away. When my sister and I were charged with cleaning the living room, we had to empty the ash trays. Remember that? Every home had ash trays. Every business had ash trays, too—tall, industrial size metal cans. At the bank. At the post office. At the library. At church....

People smoked in restaurants, too. It never bothered my mom at all—until she stopped smoking. "I can't believe they're smoking in here. It smells terrible," she would grumble, sotto voce, to make sure the person heard her. Of course, that was much later. After she'd smoked for 35 years.

In junior high and high school, I learned "the dangers of smoking," as every student did. But for most kids, those lessons fell on deaf ears. Because everyone smoked. It was part of the culture. If I suggested to my mother that she quit, she would smirk and say, "My mother has smoked all her life, and she's still alive."

See, there were studies that indicated smoking contributed to all kinds of evil in our bodies. But the idea of everyone quitting smoking was met with derision. Cries of, "It's my constitutional right to do what I want with my body!" were heard, and "The government's not gonna take my cigarettes away!" and "This is America; we're free to do as we choose here!"

If this rhetoric sounds familiar, it may be because we began to hear similar outcries in the wake of the recent shooting in Parkland, Florida.

This week, as some of us were pleading for tighter controls on the dissemination of guns across the country, others were clenching their fingers tighter around their assault weapons and parroting Charlton Heston: "...from my cold dead hands."

The difficulty here is multi-layered. Clearly, it won't be enough to simply tighten up some of the pre-existing gun laws. We can raise the age of majority to 21, but that wouldn't have stopped the Las Vegas shooter who killed 58 and wounded 851. We can make it illegal to own certain types of weapons such as the AR-15 (the semi-automatic rifle Nikolaus Cruz used to kill 17 people in the Parkland mass shooting), but opponents argue that "criminals will find a way to get them anyway." We can arm teachers—okay, no, not really, not realistically, oh my lord the thought of some teachers I've worked with having a gun in the closet—just NO.

But something has to be done. Something has to be done NOW.

Here is what my friend Doug Brooks had to say on his Facebook page about this issue:

The fact that anyone is surprised at the violence constantly being played out across our country is in itself a surprise to me. For several decades, we have been programming our youth for just this outcome. This programming has been achieved through what we call "entertainment." There has been a complete lack of any kind of moral compass in television, movies, and video games. Graphic violence in entertainment has become a "normal" part of our children's lives. Have you seen the first person shooter video games that children play every day? Our society is reaping exactly what we have sowed. This is not a gun control issue. It is a mind control issue. The United States of America was established to ensure and protect an individual's right to be "free." However, this freedom, without a strong ethical and moral base, ends up as chaos. And that, my fellow Americans, is where we seem to be heading....

He has a point.

I walked past my granddaughter's room one day to find her sprawled on the floor in the position of a military sniper, holding her game controller. On the monitor before her, the point of view was down the barrel of an assault rifle. My first--but non-verbal--response was 'holy shit.' My first verbal response was to ask about the "game." She explained that yes, she was killing people, but that "we're the good guys." So that made it okay.

That is not okay, at least not with me.

But she's 18. She can choose for herself--in the same way that she could choose to take up smoking if she so desired. "But," she told me (later, after the Parkland shooting) when we discussed whether playing violent video games contributed to the likelihood of someone shooting up a school, "I would never go crazy and start shooting anyone." No. She wouldn't. But... I have also seen my nephew, when he was 15, playing a far more violent video game. This is a young man with profound anxiety and mental health issues. He also has a severely violent temper and has threatened his own mother with bodily harm while enraged. (Before you panic, there are no guns in their home. He has never been around guns. Of course, that doesn't mean he couldn't easily get one, the way things are right now. Because now he's over 18. He's actually over 21, so even if the age of majority is raised, he can still get a gun if he wants one.

If you believe that it's okay for that young man to own an assault rifle because "it's his right as an American under the Second Amendment," I would have to question whether you are capable of thinking rationally. If you agree with me that no, he should not have access to any kind of weapon, nor should others like him, then we're taking a small step in the right direction.

And that's what it's going to take to turn this ship around--many, many small adjustments in the way we do things, the way we think about things, including the culture of gun ownership and availability in the United States. The process will be slow and arduous and, for some, painful (as was quitting smoking for so many people). Is it worth it, though? Oh, hell yes it is.

We need to bring about change that is substantial and far-reaching, just as we ultimately accomplished with smoking. Back then, some said it would be impossible to shake ourselves free of the spell the tobacco industry had cast upon us. Remember the Marlboro Man? He was so handsome, so cool. Until he was diagnosed with cancer....

Our culture is suffering from its own form of cancer currently. But we can beat it. One step at a time.