Disarm: Anthology as Action
Any action is often better than no action. ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
What happens when you’ve contacted your representatives, signed petitions, argued with people you haven’t seen since high school on Facebook, unfriended said people you haven’t seen since high school on Facebook, followed and tweeted the #filibuster and #goodtrouble sit-in…and it still doesn’t seem like enough?
Disarm, an anthology in the works from Black Heart Magazine, is looking for submissions, including poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. For now, this is the action I will take.
I cannot watch another mass shooting go by and do nothing.
I cannot worry whether a reader, a student, a colleague, a student is going to disagree with me. They might. And, in my neck of the literal woods, they probably will.
I cannot return to teaching in August and practice shelter-in-place drills with my students as if it were normal, to listen to the security presentation about how a piece of paper over the window will prevent a tragedy. Children practice each school year how not to get shot…this should not be the norm. This should not be accepted.
I cannot read the Second Amendment again, and wonder how half a nation and half a Supreme Court misses the words “militia” and “well-regulated.”
I cannot ignore the correlation to domestic violence. Research is needed here. Reporting domestic violence is needed here.
I cannot watch news reports and wait for another round of thoughts and prayers, and no action.
“If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally…” ~ Eckhart Tolle.
I cannot remove myself because this is my home. I love my family, my community, my friends. Yet I cannot accept the current state of things. I cannot accept mass murder. I cannot accept a personal right to bear arms when innocent people are killed en masse. I cannot accept that, as a society, we are desensitized to it.
Some things are Not. Right. Some things need action.
#Acceptance #Disarm #domesticviolence #secondamendment #EckhartTolle #action