This week again demonstrated the ugly, traumatic relationship this country has with gun violence.
Our attention and the media’s focus lurched from the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah to a shooter firing at a school in Colorado later that day. And it virtually ignored the everyday violence in Pennsylvania that took the lives of Lauren in Philadelphia, Jermaine in East Lansdowne, and Brady Hugh Paul in Canonsburg. It is buried in the silent pain of the many Pennsylvanians who lost their lives to firearm suicide, whose names I do not know.
We're in the midst of a slow moving massacre, jolted out of numbness only by uniquely horrific acts of violence. The assassination of Melissa Hortman. The two-year-old killed at a birthday party. An attack on a high school. The assassination of a political activist in front of hundreds of college students, captured on video and shared millions of times.
It is understandable to become numb or allow this relentless news to wash over you as you go about your day. It's how I operated prior to becoming CeaseFirePA's executive director.
But our job is to change how we operate. To honor those lives lost that make the news and those that don't. To remember, they are someone's brother or sister, child or parent, friend or co-worker. To fight that numbness to the violence, remembering those we've lost, is an act of resistance.
It is a refusal to accept that this is how we must live, that violence in America is natural, necessary, or the price of freedom. I believe in a future free from gun violence where we all have the freedom to send our kids to school and go to our jobs without fear, worship and play without worry, gather, and get to know our neighbors and friends.
We’d sleep more soundly at night, knowing that even if times are hard or we disagree with our neighbors, we wouldn’t have to fear that a bullet would steal our lives or our loved ones.
I believe that. If you believe that, I'm asking you to do one thing today: Share this message with five friends in Pennsylvania. And ask them to get involved at www.CeaseFirePA.org.
The alternative to numbness or despair is collective action. It's good to be dissatisfied with the status quo, and volunteering is one effective way to channel your grief and anger.
Friend, if you share our vision of a future free from gun violence, please sign up to become a volunteer today.
