https://www.dailykos.com/news/EmileDurkheim News Community Action Copyright 2005 - Steal what you want Tue, 28 Jan 2020 01:56:23 +0000 Tue, 28 Jan 2020 01:56:23 +0000 Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) https://www.dailykos.com/story/2018/4/3/1754091/-To-willingly-act-in-unity-before-we-willingly-forget-in-despair <p>The smoke never really clears. The smell of sulfur and saltpeter lingers, a haze swirling over the blood-smeared floors of schools, churches and movie theaters, a sinking fog kissing the grey, turned ground of fresh graves, seeping into the chasms of breaking hearts.</p> <p>This is what war is – knowing those who have violently died at the hands of a committed assailant and fearing for the safety of those who could be the next to die.</p> <p>When I was young, the Vietnam War was a yoke borne by families on every street, rural highway, tiny lane, and on every floor of every tenement in the country. If you weren’t drafted to go to Southeast Asia, then it was your brother or your neighbor, your son or your classmate. If there were a body bag coming back from the jungles and rice paddies on the other side of the world, chances are it, too, contained the remains of someone in your life’s orbit.</p> <p>Think of what losing someone in a pointless war would mean to you today, or at any stage of your life. The social fabric that you now take for granted would be pocked with moth-eaten holes framed by broken threads and irreparably lost connections.</p> <p>The American wars of the first three-quarters of the last century – the two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam – were felt by every citizen, every immigrant, every red, white and blue community. Even the challenges to our country during the Great Depression left few families unscarred. These were the times of shared fear and sorrow, events that unified us in common despair.</p> <p>In their aftermath, we grew a strong resolve, and brought the lessons from the foxholes of war to the streets where we lived. We woke to recognize what the countries of the Old World had long ago grasped after centuries of poverty, pestilence and war, that we are all on this ride through life together, and that which serves any of us – rich or poor, black or white or brown - is necessarily beneficial to all of us.</p> <p>That’s not to say, of course, that we birthed a social utopia. History reminds us that we stubbornly hold on to racism, privilege and xenophobia, but the battles we continue to fight shoulder-to-shoulder enable us to come together and bring change to even those endemic, systemic injustices.</p> <p>Those battles never end, and we continue to push forward and take a stand, but our national determination, so far removed from our shared struggles, is lacking. The will to help others is too often dependent on the values of our siloed communities.</p> <p>Yet we fought wars and climbed out of poverty with each other’s help. We found cures for diseases like polio and built a strong middle class with each other’s help. The only way we can keep slaughter out of our schools is with each other’s help.</p> rss@dailykos.com (ProseAndThorn) CollectiveConscience EmileDurkheim GunControl MarchForOurLives Movements Parkland SchoolShootings _1754091 Tue, 03 Apr 2018 16:20:18 +0000