After the events at Michigan State, last month, we crossed the barrier of “multi-time school shooting survivor.” Now after Nashville, we have reached the stage of “the journalist reporting on the story can relay her own experience.”
We need a national support group. But without metal detectors, not sure anyone would attend.
Joylyn Bukovac, a reporter for WSMV-4 in Nashville, said Monday’s incident brought back horrible memories of her own experience, which happened while she was in eighth grade.
She did not disclose the exact incident but mentioned a date on Twitter—Feb. 5, 2010—which corresponds to a shooting at Discovery Middle School in Madison, Alabama, in which one student died.
In a segment Monday afternoon from the station’s studio, she said that covering the shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, in which six people have died so far, brought the memories of that day “flooding back.”
I don’t know where to take this. I don’t know what more I need to be saying here, except that I am using the last bit of spark I have for today to write this, and to go in front of the camera and be a face of the anti-gun movement.
The reporter gets it.
A student at Michgan State has survived. Twice.
I really don’t think Americans enjoy living a life of fear, where one in 7,500 Americans statistically, die every year because of guns. It’s like the sickest lottery since Gonzales, TX during the Texas Revolution. Except with this one, just going the store to buy black beans can put me in the path of a bullet.
-ROC
A special message from your human, Todd:
Normally I write professionally as Rule of Claw, or “The Claw.” But this is a message from me, Todd:
My wife is facing an oophorectomy to check for cancer. Her mom is dying of myelodysplastic syndrome. I am squeezing every bit of juice out of my orange because my energy never returned post-Covid.
But you know what? Yesterday parents kissed their children goodbye for the last time because of access to guns. This is not anywhere near rare, anymore. Parents kiss their kids like spouses kiss each other on their way to their jobs as law enforcement officers. Something has to be done. Someone has to step up. A lot of someones. I don’t have the health to do this alone. But..
Together..
The image of the little girl on a bus crying in terror is haunting me. I can’t rest knowing our children can’t concentrate on their studies sitting in a classroom in constant fear.
We can’t Tweet our way through to a solution. I can’t talk my way to a solution. I can’t only write. It is going to take an army of dedicated Claw family to join together and put in the work. We have to knock on the doors for people like Maxwell Frost and Anna Hernandez.
We have to make the calls. We have to go to school board meetings, and PTA get-togethers. We have to visit community gatherings. We have to work constantly, because our opponents lie constantly. And outworking tech powered lies is daunting. But we have to try.
Join the Claw Family. My Patreon is here. And please, watch and share the video below to learn about what we are building, there is no cost for that. There are a multitide of ways you can “join the family.”
We are going to build a truly progressive network of love and acceptance and strength to serve as another pillar alongside Daily Kos, with real strength that comes from the soul, not from a weapon.
And maybe someday, this nation will learn to rely on the only bullet worth firing:
Love.
Love,
-Todd