I also love how this bill doesn’t follow the ableist agenda that’s been going around lately that demonizes mentally ill people. The bill carefully specifies that the ban is for convicted domestic abusers. Good job Oregon.
This is the election that counts. Start educating yourself now on who will be campaigning to be your congresspeople/governor/etc.
Register to vote NOW. Don’t wait. You can do it any time.
This is the fight we need to win. VOTE
VOTE
VOTE
Also…reminder to pay attention to all local elections and VOTE. These elected officials are the people most likely to directly impact your life in the short term.
This has to start now. Right now.
Get your birth certificates. There may be a fee or long wait times. Make sure you get a certified copy.
Make sure you have ID. Dig into your state’s laws and the whole Real ID thing, because (and sorry I can’t research this now, but pneumonia) I believe there are certain states whose driver’s licenses don’t qualify for Real ID.
Make sure you’re registered to vote. Google it. Follow the instructions for your state.
Know where your local polling place is or find out if you can vote by mail.
Vote in ALL your upcoming elections. Yes, that means the little ones for city council or dog catcher or whatever. Vote those racist, homophobic, bigots out at every level.
They’re like weeds. You can pull up every visible bit, but if you leave one tiny segment of root, they’ll just come back.
To quote Mira Grant, rise up while you can. Because the Republicans are way the hell worse than zombies.
A Florida teenager who survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, issued a rousing call to action at a rally against gun violence.
Emma Gonzalez declared that the shooting at her school should be “the last mass shooting.”
And she responded directly to Trump’s tweet, which blamed students at the school for not reporting on the shooter’s behavior before the event.
“We did,” Gonzalez said, “time and time again, since he was in middle school.”
“We need to pay attention to the fact that this isn’t just a mental health issue,” she continued. “He wouldn’t have harmed that many students with a knife.”
“How about we stop blaming the victims for something that was the shooter’s fault?” she demanded, and called out those who do deserve to shoulder that blame.
“[The people] who let him buy the guns in the first place. Those at the gun shows. The people who encouraged him to buy accessories for his guns to make them fully automatic. The people who didn’t take them away from him when they knew that he expressed homicidal tendencies. And I am not talking about the FBI. I am talking about the people that he lived with, I’m talking about the neighbors who saw him outside holding guns.”
And Gonzalez again did not let Trump’s responsibility go unremarked upon
“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy, and how it should never have happened, and maintain telling us that nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.”
Gonzalez then called attention to the $30 million spent by the NRA in support of Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and how that translates onto each life lost to gun violence.
“That comes out to being $5800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump?” She asked.
“To every politician who has taken donations from the NRA: Shame on you!”
The crowd erupted into a loud chant, echoing her cry: “Shame on you!”
Emma Gonzalez and her Florida community are not allowing Trump, the Republican Party, or the NRA to intimidate them into silence. They are speaking up to defend their families, and shaming those who enable this epidemic of violence.
The video of the full speech by Emma Gonzalez, via CNN’s YouTube:
I really want people to understand this. I really want people to grasp how different and unique this response has been. It’s something we’ve never really seen before despite the amount of mass shootings we have in this country. Too often (myself included) we say nothing will be done and feel defeated – but these kids are the future. They are not letting strangers and the media tell their stories and package their narrative. We’ve never seen kids protest this way after such trauma. There won’t be instant change. There may not be change for several years – but these students are not far away from voting, joining grassroots organizations, campaigns, etc or running for office themselves. I am so proud of them.
Caravankids 