Guns Are The Ultimate "Kitchen Table" Issue

I have been reading a lot this election cycle how Democrats are trying to avoid "social issues" in favor of "kitchen table" issues because that's what their internal polling says or something. And hey, I get that there should be a focus on those issues, like inflation and affordable housing for starters. However, I would argue that guns are the ultimate "kitchen table" issue.

They are because when I got home from work that day I sat down at the table to eat dinner with my family and looked my two fourth-grade daughters right in the eye. Just thinking about how they are the exact same age as the victims is almost too much to bear for me. I contemplate how there are fourth-grade parents in Uvalde whose children will never sit at their kitchen table again, how so many of their kids' friends they have gotten to know are gone forever, too. I have no idea how the survivors are going to carry that pain. 

Our country's insane gun policies mean that a lot of other parents in this country are having the exact same thoughts this evening as they sit down at their own kitchen tables. Protecting our children is the most basic duty parents have, and the sacrifices demanded by the gun Moloch and given freely by our society take that protection out of our hands. And yes, the odds of a school shooting happening in our own school are very low, but there is no way to not contemplate it happening to your own kids because these shootings are so common and completely random. 

The response by Democrats on this issue has been completely pathetic. They hold the House, Senate, and White House, yet have failed to get something passed. The House has taken action, but enough Democratic Senators would rather preserve a procedural rule made to protect slavery than protect our own children. Evidently the filibuster matters, and the safety of our children doesn't. The Senate Majority Leader has talked about making a compromise with Republicans, as if any of them are going to break ranks and turn against the most fervent element of their base. Schumer is just a coward, using this as a convenient excuse to kick the can down the road to the next massacre. At this incredibly fraught moment where action is needed he has called a recess for two weeks.

I have a proposal. We need to make this a very unpleasant vacation for our Senators, Democrat or Republican. They need to hear from us every day. We need to flood their public events and demand action, fill up the voicemails of their local offices, and call them out in public in whatever way that we can. They should not be able to show their faces anywhere without being asked to DO SOMETHING. Beto's recent actions might be a bit theatrical, but at least he shows he really and truly wants to disrupt this completely dysfunctional pattern. I haven't seen a single other Democrat prove that to me. 

I can't get any rest because every waking moment of my day is tortured by the thought that my kids or me (as a teacher) could be next. The faces of the victims in Buffalo and Uvalde haunt me every night when I try to sleep. I keep wondering when the next white supremacist terrorist is going to strike in this nation bathing in hatred and toxic masculinity. If I can't get any rest, these lazy cowards who actually have the power to do something shouldn't get any either. 

Pence and Trump at the NRA

Today Mike Pence and Donald Trump spoke at the NRA's convention in Dallas. Amidst the absolute shitstorm of the Trump administration it was easy to miss, but very important.

This year has seen the biggest youth-driven protests since the Vietnam War, all calling for gun control. In the face of a popular outcry that has mobilized millions, politicians who are concerned with public opinion might feel some responsibility to move away from their unpopular opinions, pay lip service to those aggrieved, or even just to keep their mouths shut on the topic. Now, in the face of protest, the president and vice-president went straight to the NRA to pledge their fealty. This would have been surprising even in normal times; the last president to address the organization was Reagan. The vice president even openly stated the NRA's most infamous talking point "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

The president went on one of his patented rants, railing about witch hunts and attacking the justice system for daring to investigate him. He did this in front of an organization that disseminates radical right-wing propaganda through NRA TV. These were the "second amendment people" he referred to threateningly during the 2016 campaign, implying that they would do violence against Hilary Clinton. These were the people "warmed up" for the president's speech with videos played in the convention hall attacking Black Lives Matter and journalists.

Now let's play a game. Let's imagine we are behind the veil of ignorance in an unnamed country. If the leader of that country went to an organization advocating gun proliferation, whose convention attacked political dissent and the press, and that leader spent his speech ranting against his enemies, how would we view it? This certainly does not sound like the behavior of a democratic leader. It sounds like a despot. Imagine the headlines if a leader in a foreign country did this: "Embattled Leader Condemns Rule Of Law In Speech At Radical Reactionary Meeting." 

In a subtle way, Trump and Pence's trip to the NRA is a sign of our democracy's death. In a nation crying out for limitations on guns, nothing is going to happen to answer those cries. Some of this is rooted in contempt for the political opposition, but some of it comes with the knowledge that our system, as currently composed, currently allows minority rule.

Trump is president, despite losing by three million votes. The House is gerrymandered eight ways from Sunday. The Senate gives outside power to small, conservative states. The Supreme Court remains in conservative hands after the Senate refused to move Obama's nominee forward. The right is well aware that they are in the minority, but also that that doesn't matter. With the levers of government rigged, with massive infusions of Koch cash able to swing state-level elections, they know that they are not about to lose power anytime soon.

The only possible short-term solution is for those of us in the disempowered majority is to organize organize organize and flood the polls in November. I am afraid that the momentum of the gun control movement after Parkland has already been lost. The other side is organized and ruthless, and we are still, even at this late day, divided and in disarray.

What I Saw At The March For Our Lives In Newark

Yesterday I was one of the millions who turned out for March for Our Lives events in the United States and the world. I attended the one in Newark, partly because it was the closest one, but also because I'm a former resident of Brick City, a place I hold close to my heart. (I made sure to go back to my old neighborhood afterward and get a giant plate of Portuguese food and a big bag of stuff from one of the bakeries.)

I was not anticipating a huge turnout, mostly because people around here tend to go to marches like this in New York City to be a part of the bigger, more noteworthy event. I was happily surprised to see a very large crowd at Military Park in downtown Newark when I arrived, and by the time things got kicked off, it doubled in size. The event started with a half hour of speeches and performances, then we marched over to Washington Park and snaked around it to go back to Military Park to hear speeches by the big shots in attendance. I knew we were a big congregation because I was near the front, and once we got around Washington Park we had to stop because the people in the back third were blocking our way because they were still coming.

One thing I was very glad to see that while this event drew a lot of people from suburban New Jersey, it still put a lot of focus on Newark. Students from Newark schools performed music and dance, and they gave speeches that talked about gun violence more broadly. They spoke not just about school shootings, but also of the day to day gun violence in the streets of Newark, domestic violence, and police shootings like the recent tragedy in Sacramento. I came away from the event thinking that many of the white, suburban attendees might also see the issue of gun violence with a broader lens. That's necessary, and also an important rebuttal to naysayers who refuse to participate in this movement because they think it doesn't check all of their woke checkboxes.

While the students may have stumbled a little over their speeches or not have been completely polished, those things only served to highlight their courage. I did speech and debate in high school, but I could not have imagined giving a speech in front of thousands of people with the governor and my Congressman sitting in the wings. The politicians in attendance did a good job motivating the crowd and keeping things brief, at least. My representative in the House, Donald Payne Jr, has actually been out front on this issue and has crafted a bill for gun buybacks. He kept things fiery, and connected the march with the need to vote in the upcoming election. (A lot of the people there hail from purple districts currently represented by Republicans.) New governor Phil Murphy gave a very short, to the point speech emphasizing efforts on the state level. I even cut state senator (and charter school supporter) Teresa Ruiz some slack because her comments were pretty effective.

This event gave me hope because the main reason gun control has failed to be passed at the national level has less to do with the NRA itself and more to do with the extreme pro-gun minority. These people have always cared a LOT more about guns than the people who wanted to limit them. Guns for them are closely tied to their deepest identities, and so like Prohibition gun control is really an argument over what kind of country this is. Opponents of gun control have been acting desperate and attacking teenage survivors of mass shootings because they know they have been in the minority for years and have been getting by on complacency. Will this actually lead to meaningful change? I do not know, but I get the feeling that outside of deep red areas politicians who are highly rated by the NRA are going to be forced to answer for that.

On an unrelated sidenote, I briefly talked yesterday with Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo yesterday, but only realized it after he walked away. "Joe D" is one of the big political fixers in the state, with rumors of corruption swirling about him. Despite that, Chris Christie never prosecuted him during his stint as state's attorney, when he went after several corrupt politicians. Joe D paid him back by supporting Christie's re-election, despite the fact that he was a conservative Republican and DiVincenzo is a Democrat in a a county that is deep blue.Yesterday, as we were stopped on the march route, a distinguished gentleman struck up a conversation with me, and his face looked strangely familiar. I made a little friendly small talk, and when the march ended he squeezed my arm and thanked me for showing up. At that moment I realized it was indeed Joe D, but it was too late. I was going to ask him why if he cared about gun control so much he supported a governor who vetoed new gun legislation.

My hope is that Democrats like Joe D saw what was happening yesterday and got a little scared for themselves. Machines like his rely on political complacency, a complacency which has made it possible for a blue state like New Jersey has been living under austerity for the past eight years. Even if gun control does not get passed in the short term, we are perhaps seeing a political awakening from the left that will not only get Republicans tossed out of office. Just as importantly, it could also give us better Democrats. One can only hope.

Gun Control and Social Democracy

In the weeks since the Parkland shooting, the president of the United States has endorsed arming teachers. Others have proposed turning our schools into armed camps. School children are doing even more "Code Red" drills.

However, the biggest modern mass shooting in America took place at a concert. Many others have happened at restaurants or churches, yet we do not see a call to require armed pastors or to turn every Applebee's into a fortress.

The reason for this is pretty simple: the people who want gun proliferation hate public schools. They want to make public schools miserable places because public schools go against their ideology, which claims only the private sphere is good and matters.They want a society where everything public is gutted and personal violence is the ultimate law. In this dystopic understanding we should all have guns, and then ultimate peace will prevail.

Gun control matters because it is a fight against a pernicious worldview. Fighting for gun control isn't just about saving lives, it is about combatting an absolutely sociopathic understanding of society, one that I think is related to this country's wealth inequality, killer cops, rotting infrastructure, underfunded schools, lack of social safety net, and general crappiness for those not fortunate enough to be rich.

If we are to have a more social democratic society, more people in this country need to have a more social democratic outlook. Those opposed to it have used guns very effectively. They sell a seductive narrative of individualism, one where the government is an impediment and armed citizens should be empowered. 

As with health care, however, guns are an issue where social democrats can easily point out how our lives can be made so much better with a collective solution. After decades of neoliberalism, it is time for a social democratic moment, and social democrats can seize it on issues like guns, which do not first appear to be of a traditionally social democratic nature.

"Code Red" And Crying At My Dinner Table

Tonight at dinner I witnessed one of the biggest mood reversals in my life. Sometimes I play jaunty music at dinner, and tonight it was uptempo fifties doo-wop. My daughters were loving it, getting up from their plates to dance manically to "Blue Moon." It was one of those too perfect moments, like something out of a movie about a carefree, happy family. A minute later I was crying.

They were telling us about their day, and started to tell us about how they did a "code red" drill at school today. With the same wide-eyed manic energy they were demonstrating how to hide under a table if a shooter was in the room, and I lost it.

It was something I already knew theoretically, but now the harsh, disgusting reality set in: my little five year olds live in a country where mass shootings are so common that they have to prepare for them at school like they are tornadoes or fires.

We have become so accustomed to this, so resigned, that rather than doing anything to actually stop these things, we have just accepted them as a fact of life. Our schools and our communities have gotten used to seeing little children as targets of carnage. We have collectively decided that we would rather sacrifice a few children now and then than do anything that would require taking away anyone's guns.

After Sandy Hook the die was cast. We will keep sacrificing our children to the Moloch of our moral corruption and indifference. It has to stop. If this bothers you, go beyond posting anti-gun memes the day after an attack. Vote and get out the vote for people trying to stop this. Get out into the street and put pressure on the politicians who condone it or who are too cowardly to fight against it. After looking into my children's eyes as they told me how they would hide if a shooter was in their school I know that there is nothing else that I can do and still be capable of living with myself.