13-years to the day of the Sandy Hook Gun Massacre of 20 children, gun violence fueled by hate & madness, killed 15 Jews celebrating Hanukkah in Australia, and 2 Brown University students in R.I.
(Artwork by Ezra Jack Keats, a Jewish artist and writer, who dedicated his life’s work to fighting discrimination against others.)
On the 13th Anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School gun massacre of 20 children — ages 6 & 7 — and six adults, the news of a mass murder of Jews celebrating Hanukkah in Sydney, Austalia, and the killing of 2 Brown University Students, served as a stark reminder that the unimaginable has become all too real again and again.
No place is safe, nor immune from gun violence — not bucolic college campuses, not beautiful beaches full of holiday revelers, not elementary schools with walls adorned by the innocent artwork of our babies.
As the never-ending mind-numbing news from Australia and Providence, Rhode Island continues to unfold, Daniel Barden’s smiling, toothless 7-year old face keeps flashing in front of me, as does the unbridled joy of his classmate Dylan Hockley, flapping his arms in delight like a “beautiful butterfly.”
Daniel & Dylan — two of the babies ripped from us in Sandy Hook — would be 20 years old today. For many of us, they are our children, our grandchildren, and they are alive every day through our efforts, and through the work of https://www.sandyhookpromise.org, the anti-gun violence organization founded by the parents of Sandy Hook’s children.
Tonight, I will celebrate Hanukkah with my family at home, in
California, with our precious granddaughters. Part of me will also be in Sydney, Australia, and Sandy Hook, and Providence, R.I. The unimaginable is with us, again and again and again, and it is an inerasable memory.
***
I first heard the news reports about the massacre of 20 first graders Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, after I walked out of court in Marin County, California, and turned my car radio on that December 14, 2012.
I had just secured a restraining order from a judge to prevent a mentally ill individual, who bragged he had a gun, from coming onto the campus of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) which I was running at the time. He had threatened several of my staff members, and starting ranting to the judge that the CIA was after him.
The judge asked me if I had anything further to add, and I rolled my eyes and said “No, your honor. I think my case has been made.” The Judge immediately granted the restraining order. We were fortunate; we had a warning; we had time to act.
If only, I thought, such warnings were paid attention to, and swift, stern legal action or mental health intervention was taken toward the young man who slaughtered 20 innocent babies–26 people in total–that terrible day in December, 2012.
Unimaginably, things have gotten worse since then, with the election of a heartless, brainless, shrunken souled tool of the NRA as President, the unbounded proliferation of assault weapons which can assassinate hundreds in a mere few minutes, the normalization of violence against people of different faiths, races, or nations, and the passage of a legislation in Congress and in States around the US, which would allow more individuals — including those with mental health warning signs — to more easily obtain weapons, and use them, anywhere they want.
Medical research into gun violence — the leading cause of death for children and teenagers, ages 1 through 17, according to Johns Hopkins Medical School — is being forcibly fought by fact-denying public officials, and by propagandists for the gun lobby in the US, and around the world, who are often the same shills.
Citizens in Florida, and many other states, are now permitted to openly carry weapons into grocery stores; pre-meditated gun murders are committed in a Pittsburg Synagogue because the congregants are Jews and they supported immigrant rights; in the historic Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina because the worshippers were Black: in a Buffalo supermarket, with a predominantly Black clientele; in Uvalde, Texas, an overwhelmingly Latino community; in nightclubs where gays gather; at open-air concerts, at Walmarts, and at school after school after school.
On any given day, I walk past my granddaughters’ schools — all within proximity to my house — just to check that things are safe and calm, and nothing looks out of the ordinary, and that the windows covered with paper snowflakes, or announcements of bookfairs, or holiday concerts have not been shattered.
On any given occasion when I attend my synagogue in Santa Rosa, I thank the Security guards who are there to protect us, and look around the Sanctuary to size up the chair or book or item I would pick up to throw at an attacker, to save one life or maybe more.
I no longer want to listen to reason or engage in discussion on the subjects of guns or violence or hatred or inhumanity. I want gun confiscation without accommodation; I want crimes of hate against all people, regardless of difference, severely punished: I want hate speech and winks and nods toward violence banned, especially when uttered by public officials. I want acts of love and humanity to be recognized, elevated and rewarded.
I want all our children to live like beautiful butterflies, free from domestic violence, or random acts of violence, or State sponsored acts of violence, or war. I want them to live bathed in love, free of fear or famine, and protected from the consequences of the failures of the adults around them.
I want the unimaginable to become unimaginable once again.