Friday, June 29, 2018

Annapolis

I'm from the Annapolis area. The house where I grew up, where I lived until I left for college and then returned to during the summer until I graduated and left the country, is 15 minutes from the Capital Gazette headquarters. The Capital is my hometown paper. It's where I got my first ever letter to the editor published. Wendi Winters, one of the staff members killed, wrote the weekly "Teen of the Week" column highlighting good work being done by a local young person, and she covered local high school theatre productions.

I'm so sad for the local reporters who were killed and for their families and friends. I'm so proud of the reporters who kept going and put out a paper today. I'm so angry about the violence and the fear they experienced -- that, because trauma lives in the body, they are still experiencing.

I'm not shocked that this happened in 'my town,' because this is every town in the U.S., and we need to recognize that and respond accordingly.

I don't have anything new to say about mass shootings. I've reflected before on how I make sense of prayer and action in response to news of violence; about the inaccurate perceptions around mental illness and violence; about the unhealthy systems that we ought to be examining and diagnosing in response to violence. To that last post about unhealthy systems at play in violence, you could add something about hostility toward journalists: the killer, who had been brought up on criminal charges for harassing a woman (a history of violence against women being one of the most stable predictors of mass shootings), had sued the paper claiming libel. He felt like them reporting on his criminal behavior towards women was, well, fake news. It wasn't. I wonder how much of his decision to act on his toxic anger toward the paper was empowered by the current climate of suspicion and even urging of violence against journalists. A sitting member of Congress physically assaulted a reporter during his campaign and was still allowed to take his seat.

I keep starting and stopping this piece, writing and re-writing it. I want to say something about my memories of Annapolis. About walking around the Naval Academy with my dad -- he graduated from there in 1963. About pondering going to St. John's. About somehow dropping my wallet off the end of the dock into the cold waters of the head of the Severn River while turning silly cartwheels with friends. About music at Rams Head Tavern. About the Parade of Lights, boats decorated for Christmas. About Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. About how crossing the Bridge with the sun sparkling on the Bay still, after more than a decade, feels like coming home.

I want to say something about all that, but the memories aren't holding still for me right now. Somehow, I couldn't even find a photo of me in Annapolis -- I know there are so many, but I don't know where they are. The images are all jumbled in my head, mixed up with breaking news about violence.

There's a motto bouncing around right now -- I think it's from Everytown for Gun Safety, but maybe it originated elsewhere, I'm not sure. It says, "We don't have to live like this. We don't have to die like this."

Annapolis is everytown. It's got all the same joy and pain and heartbreak and wonder and mediocrity of any other American town. People shouldn't have to live in fear there, or anywhere. People shouldn't have to be shot in their workplaces or their schools or their streets, there, or anywhere.

So I guess I'll end this by pulling a quote from the last time I wrote a blog on the topic of gun violence:
By all means, send thoughts and send prayers. Send prayers by extending real compassion to the people who have been hurt and killed. Pray for the wisdom and the insight to know how to respond responsibly. And think. Put your mind to work. Think systems. Think about the multiple factors that impact a person to lead them to violence. And think carefully and prayerfully -- what the Christian tradition has referred to as "discernment" -- about how you, too, and the communities you inhabit, are impacted by and in turn can impact those systems. Thoughts and prayers? Yes, by all means -- we will need both. Actions? Yes, those too. Putting them all together? That's thinking systems. That's the kind of thing that might just lead us to properly diagnose this problem. And maybe, just maybe, find a cure.

No comments:

Post a Comment