Tag: gun violence

Not Just a Can of Paint

July 7, 2020.Reading time 3 minutes.

I will keep this short…

There is a global pandemic…Covid-19
…also anti-black racism
…also violence against women
…also fear and isolation of disabilities.

…and more.

The United States faces its own unique epidemic…gun entitlement
…also militarized (hyper-masculinized) concepts of policing
…also health and wellness that is the national equivalent of cotton in the early 1800s.
…also an economy that relies on poverty
…and a distrust of knowledge and information.

…and more.

Together, these make for a powerfully toxic stew.  We cannot fix one, without fixing the others.  We cannot have a response for one, without a response for the others.  More police will not fix the spike in gun violence.  Fewer guns will not de-militarize policing.  Ending violence against women will not un-enslave millions from health care that wants to keep them sick and without access.  Fixing healthcare alone will not end the assault that men and the government wage physically and culturally on women’s bodies.  We have to be willing to look holistically at strategies to untangle the whole knot.

…the solutions to social discord and sickness and violence and fear is not as simple as a can of paint or choosing not to wear a mask out of self determination.

Watching a woman attempt to paint over the Black Lives Matter mural in Martinez, CA (a city I know well from my time in the Bay Area) it became crystal clear to me that we have become a culture of people who believe that we can act as solo agents with a can of paint and erase things we don’t like or don’t understand. We are both lazy while being resentful of being told what to do.  This is also why wearing a mask to prevent the spread of covid-19 is political. This is the real challenge we face in this time; the solutions to social discord and sickness and violence and fear is not as simple as a can of paint or choosing not to wear a mask out of self determination.  What is required is more intimate, more interconnected and much more time and energy consuming. What is more, the solutions cannot come from a place of rage.  The solutions we seek, have to come from a sense of shared humanity that honors difference and different perspectives, because we collectively and individually value the way our own difference is mutually respected by others.

Human beings have incredible capacity, to learn, to understand, to grow, to evolve.  It is time for us to reclaim these capabilities before we forget that we have them altogether.

-ALD

05xp-unrest-mural-pix-articleLarge
…a can of paint. (Martinez, CA)

 

Please also read this important information from Everytown for Gun Safety about the connection between gun sales, gun violence, our response to covid-19 and public health: Gun Violence and COVID-19

Dear Gun Advocates,

August 10, 2019.Reading time 3 minutes.
city new york statue of liberty usa
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Dear Gun Advocates,

I know many of you, and I want you to know that I love you.  But I do not trust you.  Please understand that I do not think you are bad people; I know you are not.  I just don’t trust what having lethal force in your hands has meant to the United States and what it means in this world going forward.  Whether it is police who have all-too-human or blatantly racist biases or “good guys” who pull the trigger, stray bullets from gang violence or someone who is genuinely “mentally ill” or just very sad one day…I don’t trust you.  I can’t afford to take that chance any longer, and neither can you.

Guns for defense against other human beings have always been tools of oppression and cultural division in the United States.  Guns are directly linked to the most shame filled episodes of race, class and gender hatred in our shared history. Native people, African slaves, women, the Chinese, the poor (and now Latin-x immigrants) have all been at times legally obstructed from gun ownership and/or literally used as targets in the wake of those restrictions.

Today’s mass shooting epidemic is also racialized and gendered by how the vast majority of the crimes in the last 35 years have been committed by white men.  The pattern is too stark to ignore and it chills this African American to his core.  Gun advocates, I do not trust you with my safety and if suicide statistics are any indication (particularly among white men), you shouldn’t either.

As a faith leader, my respect for the unique human relationship to our consciousness of life and death tells me we have no need for guns.  Trusting any human being with weapons of mass destruction in the back of their pick-up truck or sitting in the front seat of their Prius is careless disregard for the awesome power of life and living that we possess. Our bodies are born into this world as sacred gifts not as pawns in an asinine political game of brinkmanship.

And where is the common sense?

Our national military is bigger than the next seven militaries in the world combined.

We have more guns than people.

No one dies more than once.

This is not defense.  This is not ordained by God.  This is not a “right.” This is fear. This is protracted self-harm. This is destroying everyone.

Gun advocates, I love you and my soul aches to define you by an instrument of death, but I do not trust you, even though we both say we love liberty.  Sadly, you’ve forgotten that in order to have liberty, we must first have life.

– Rev. Adam Lawrence Dyer