I was discussing the very idea as I faced the full story for the first time. That is in another thread that I'd set up a non-profit DO something for someone who had an idea how to attack.
Then my mother who is not politically active at all sent me this link (I believe written by a colleague at her College).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
I was happy to see that not just my mother, but others, who aren't on this board are disgusted. Those that are going to see their grand-children for the Holidays, family.
Those who stressed over getting a gift, now have to avoid thinking about this, but want to act. This is not an opportunistic moment. This is an embarrassment. And this article put it very well.
Don't say a prayer. Don't light a candle.
Don't post anything on Facebook or Twitter about how horrified you are by the news out of Newtown, Connecticut. Don't go to church tomorrow and listen to the pastor ask for a moment of silence for the dead.
Don't bow your head when you see the flags flying at half-mast. Don't sit on your couch and watch President Obama wipe away a tear from his eye at his press conference.
Don't participate in any of these ritualized expressions of public grief. There have been so many of these already this year.
The point is, they don't help. They don't change the laws of the land, they don't weaken the NRA, they don't frighten the cowardly politicians into action. They change nothing.
I could not have put it better myself. What I had fell far short. But more snips below the fold, and I hope discussing not grandiose action, but the kind that makes ORDINARY people matter, that the internet bore.
It was ironic as it was in the midst of pole-cat and I discussing the NRA and a non-profit to provide their foil (and possibly antagonize I cannot remember but Polecat is quite good at coming up with alternate fill in names for an ORG with NRA)
And my mother commented to me online.
My mother. Not a member. Will always vote Democratic, a poet, mother, grandmother.
Susan: I think I'm avoiding thinking about it much. I did think her article was good--actions not reactions.
So I hope I do a decent job of writing for her, difficult as she is an excellent poet.
As to the above they are nice visuals. I am glad the President is human. But I will not be glad if we do nothing only to fly our flags at half mast in 10 more years. We have a problem. When someone does they usually go to a Doctor. Here I can't prescribe action, I have ideas, and would help, but it is ACTION. Not, "call your congressman" it has to be 100x what it was. It has to be people like my mother worried about my nephew, we are the Majority. It's bad enough we let them confuse so many to vote against their interests, it's worse they (the gov't) are complicit because it is too volatile. Well the mothers, fathers, and grandmothers are getting volatile, and if they are if we don't act we should be ashamed.
As Thrity writes A candle will do nothing:
Above all, they don't bring back the dead. They won't change the fact that 20 kids below the age of 10 who were alive on Friday, are not alive today. That 26 new families will wake up on Christmas morning this year, feeling the same numbness and heart-shattering grief that so many of their fellow hand-gun victims experience each year.
Words only change nothing. If Rosa Parks had tweeted about the indignity of sitting in the back of the bus, her grandkids would still be sitting in the back of the bus. If those thousands of black men and women had lit candles at home instead of braving Bull Connor's dogs and water hoses, we'd still have segregation.
Change comes only when people put their bodies, their physical selves, on the line. Change comes when millions of people do what doesn't come naturally -- when they run toward the fire and not away from it. Change comes when people do the hard, frightening thing.
What we need is not a genteel conversation between like-minded friends. What we need is a movement. What we need is millions of sane, rational Americans standing up to the NRA, standing up to the gun lobby, standing up to say: Enough.
SNIP
So please, don't draw a peace sign. Don't say, "Something good will come out of this."
Twenty children are dead.
The military-industrial complex is alive and well. So is the NRA.
That equation must change.
And by the way, the politicians are wrong. This is exactly the moment to begin this conversation.
Now.
So what are you going to do? In elections we phone bank. We beat the NRA back. Now they are off the air. It's not "our moment" it's always been. The past has not worked. Can we change it? I don't know, as Polecat said they got rush off the air. Just ORDINARY PEOPLE with an extraordinary vision of getting a racist etc etc off the air. We are as well, Ordinary. I can do a 501(c)(3). I am not special but I don't want to just talk about it.
They died for NOTHING. Nothing. Because until now, or later, no one will talk about it. So let's talk, but let's talk about acting. Otherwise go out and buy more candles and store them.
9:36 AM PT: Again I encourage anyone with action ideas. I said for example I'll set up a Non-Profit, polecat and I had a lengthy exchange of turning NRA on NRA.