Today marks the sixth anniversary of the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 children and seven adults (including the shooter) dead. Are we making progress towards ensuring this never happens again?
This landscape is familiar, strewn with ash and blood. We’ve been here before, too often, seeking the living, counting our dead. I know the terrain, can pick my way stumbling over the bodies, the stench of fear and hatred lingering in the air; the thoughts and prayers; the headlines and statistics.
As a Jew and as a human, I have been saddened and angered today by the awful shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. And I wonder at the unending number of shootings in a country that is supposed to be a beacon of freedom and justice and ask myself: When will we have had enough?
Yes, I’m still remembering. Here’s my 9/11 story, and how the events of that day became motivation for me to start a family.
Weeks after the Trump administration ostensibly changed its policies of child separation and family detention at the U.S.-Mexico border, and after a court-imposed deadline to reunite separated families, hundreds of immigrant and refugee children are still not with their parents. These policies are only some of several recent moves by the administration and by individual states that show an appalling disregard for the well-being of children.
Wishing peace, strength, and perseverance to all who are gathering today to speak out for gun control and to end gun violence in our schools—especially the young people who are leading us where we should have gone long ago.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School GSA, along with its president, Emma Gonzalez, were honored at Equality Florida’s 2018 Miami Gala last Saturday for their work against gun violence in the wake of the tragic shooting at the school last month. Listen to Gonzalez’s remarks.
As parents in the United States, we see our children off to school each day not knowing if they will be educated or be shot. Yesterday saw the 18th school shooting in 2018 alone. There have been 290 since 2013. When a country cares more about allowing its citizens access to firearms—including high-capacity, military-style weapons—than protecting its children, it has failed its children.
Some tragic news: a mother and her two children, ages 11 and five, along with the mother’s partner, were found murdered in upstate New York yesterday.
A deadly attack on a crowd in New York City. A mass shooting in Texas, leaving at least 26 people slain. It’s easy to feel despair when this comes only a month after the largest mass shooting in American history, and after years of similar tragedies. What can we do?
