It has to stop. If there are no actions taken to stop the rising tide of anger and hatred bathing this country, we are all lost.
I'm a 70 year old Retired RN, with serious mobility limitations. I been a front line, whistle blowing advocate and activist all my life. I'm tired. I'm weary of battle. Let the younger folks take it from here.
But I have a lovely grand daughter who is just six years old, and a grown up one named Christina. But for fate, it could have little Ivy Rose and I standing in front of that Safeway yesterday. It could have been Ivy Rose who caught that bullet. Or your kid. Anyone's kid who just happened to be in the path of viciously unleashed hatred.
I've thought of little else since yesterday. I took a good long look in my mirror and asked myself "Is it really true that I am completely free of all responsibility for how things are now? Is it really true there's absolutely nothing I can do to try to stop this?"
After all, I've all but given up trading verbal bullets and spears on blogs, which meant giving up the nice "quick fix" of making someone else feel as bad as I think they deserve to feel. Finally I realized that's all it was: a quick fix for my ego and a place to dump anger and frustration. It changed no one, contributed nothing of positive use to anything. It just fed the hateful energies and toxic atmosphere.
I felt rather virtuous for making that change, even though it meant I had to exert some serious self limitation on how much time I spend in places like this. Taking good care of myself, I called it. After all, I'm retired now.
But now I see another aspect. I see myself reading threads full of nasty hurtful name calling, bigoted remarks, racism, bullying, and I simply click out. I click out when I'd see someone belittled or humiliated rather than step up. I seldom even comment at all anymore, and surely not enough to earn or keep TU. Didn't miss that either, because not having it let me off the hook in terms of any community moderating. Hey. I'm retired now.
I hardly ever write a diary anymore either, even when I think I have something to say that might be useful. Hey, much easier to just let others write and risk dodging whatever flack is flying through this corner of cyberspace. Been there, did that. I'm retired now.
The other thing I saw in my mirror was an old woman who has stopped interacting at all with the others who live here in this 100 unit senior apartment building. I got tired of dealing with religious fundamentalist republicans and racists who can't deal with the black folks from other lands who are moving in here, one by one, ruining the nice white landscape and daring to speak in other languages. To say nothing about how daunting it is to live here as a heathen lesbian grandmother who has a grand daughter who visits often with her two Moms. I can't fight all that by myself, besides, I've laid down my spear and my shield and put my white horse out to pasture. I did my share and after all, I'm retired now.
But I'm not dead yet: I am still on this blog and others, and in this apartment building and in this sad and sorry world. I still have a good mind, a good voice, and 6 of my 10 fingers can still type some damned good LTE's and letters to powerful people. I have the wisdom gained from surviving a pretty tough life and skills gained from a half century as a psych nurse caring for the so-called "least among us", and I can choose to share some of it again.
But I have chosen the silence of complicity. I have become one of those "good people who say nothing" no matter how great the need or how wrong the injustice. So sayeth the face in my mirror.
So there it is: my part of the responsibility for the fact little Christina, born on the day unleashed hatred took out thousands of innocent people in NYC, only had nine years of life before home grown hatred killed her on a street corner in her own home town in Arizona, USA. i haven't been doing my part to help or change anything.
I'm too old and stiff to get back up on that white horse, or fight on the front lines anymore. But I CAN do so much I have stopped doing. I can do my own small part much better, as a member of this community, and in this building, to speak up and out against hatred in all it's forms, however coded, and use ways that I've learned to do this without a spear in my hand or hatefulness in my own heart. Yes, I can. Yes, any one of us can.
We can learn how to "do no harm", (less harm?) without waging harsh and verbally violent pie wars and still not lose our right of free speech and debate. We can step up and speak up for those unfairly and hurtfully bullied or attacked here and elsewhere. We can choose whether make a positive or negative contribution to any part of the world we find ourselves in. Yes, we can.
And yes I will, thanks to the message innocent little Christina left behind. It was her beautiful little face that sent me to look hard at my own in my mirror. She was one of the Children of Hope: the babies born on 911 that have been memorialized in print. I will come out of retirement in her honor.
(Link help requested on that, please, as well as patience with typos: I have impaired hand function)