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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: Columbine

Toronto and Miscellaneous Items

26 Sunday May 2019

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, Patriotism, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Sports, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Tags

Canada, College Graduation, Columbine, Freedom, Pitt, Self-Reflection, Toronto, Toronto Raptors


Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, ON, Canada, March 20, 2017. (https://torontostoreys.com).

I meant to write about this a month ago, but after the Toronto Raptors’ not-so-surprising Game 6 win against the Milwaukee Bucks to make it to the NBA Finals for the first time, it’s still relevant. Last month made 20 years since the last time I’ve been north of the border (but not in Alaska, as I was in 2001). Last month was also the 28th anniversary of me finishing my bachelor’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh, and the subsequent decision to spend my first post-baccalaureate summer in Pittsburgh working and securing funding for my first year of graduate school. April 20 also marked two decades since Columbine, something that was very much on my mind during that Toronto trip and presentation at OAH there in 1999.

I can say that there are only a handful of times in my life since the end of first grade and being sexually assaulted in the summer of ’76 that I have felt “free.” By that, I mean free from the toxicity that is the US, on race, on gender, on class, on religion, on family, on friendships, on breathing, on eating, on walking, on daydreaming, on talking, on being contemplative, on laughing, on merely being myself. Those five days in Toronto to present my research on multiculturalism, to meet up with a couple of friends, to hang out in different neighborhoods and catch their subway. That was one of those times. Maybe the six months my Mom and my deceased idiot ex-stepfather Maurice spent separated between October 2, 1980 and April 13, 1981 was one of those times. Certainly when I proposed to my wife and then moved to DC and Silver Spring later on in 1999 was another. And, how can I forget the sheer ecstasy of watching my son emerge from my wife’s womb in 2003 at Sibley Hospital?

But while all of those and more experiences brought happiness, even orgasmic joy, I’ve spent more than 40 years of nearly 50 looking over my shoulder. In the back of my mind, the idea that the other shoe’s going to drop is never that far away. Even with the lack of American toxicity during my times in Toronto, I knew that this cosmopolitan city had its own unique edge. This despite the poutine, maple syrup, and Molson’s.

Plus, even with going to vegan restaurants, confirming my 1994 research on public housing policies in Toronto, seeing the diversity and freedom of movement sans the gaze of American Whites, it was still a very White city. And that Canadian Whiteness left room for a different (or really, indifferent) kind of gaze. It meant dealing with questions about Columbine and gun violence as if I could explain the actions of narcissistic White males steeped in patriarchy and entitlement. It meant remembering in subtle ways that while Canadians I met were both far nicer and kinder than most Whites in the US, they were still White. And Whiteness, like Arya Stark’s many-faced god, takes numerous forms.

I was free in ways that I couldn’t have been in the States. I walked in White neighborhoods without police following me around. I noticed how most folks didn’t lock their doors at night. I sensed that no one looked over their shoulders for a mugger. Everything was written in metric-system English, which I was happy to use in real life for the first time. It was just different, as if White Canadians hadn’t spent four centuries sitting around and figuring out even more ways to grind down Black people. I sensed that this wasn’t the case with White Canadians and First Nation tribes, though.

I didn’t feel anywhere near this free when I graduated with Degree #1 in April 1991. The immediate need of reporting to my $5.20 per hour job at Western Psych, three weeks of starvation, and the miracle that Dr. Jack Daniel performed meant that I was pensive and then relieved by May 26. I knew more twists and turns awaited me.

I want to visit again, this time with my son, and hopefully before the Fall Semester begins. I want him to see Caribana there, to breathe freer air, and to get away from the Lower 48, if only for a few days. But that’s not all. I want him to go overseas, to visit South Africa, and Nigeria, and Tanzania, and Ghana, and Mali, to see himself in everyone around him.

As for the Raptors, congrats on drudging your way to the Finals! Your organization is finally free to play for an NBA title. With Kawhi Leonard, I wouldn’t bet against you. But I’m not exactly rooting for you, either. Know that win or lose, I love your city, and the questions about freedom that it generates for me.

We Need a Partnership for a Gun-Free America

22 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Tags

#NeverAgain, 2nd Amendment, Assault Weapons, Brady Bill, Cameron Kasky, Columbine, David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, Florida, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Mass Shootings, Parkland Shooting, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Realism, Sophie Whitney, War on Drugs


With all of the fierce courage and eloquence of Marjory Stoneman Douglas herself, students from the Parkland, Florida high school have stepped up and reignited a movement. Emma Gonzales, David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, Sophie Whitney, and so many others from the school have turned their grief, sorrow, and anger into activism in the past seven days. This in the wake of a mass shooting that left 14 classmates and three teachers dead and another 17 wounded. Not only this. High school students from my son’s in Silver Spring to those all across the US have declared this chapter of the gun control movement “Never Again,” and have already staged walkouts and protest demonstrations that could be a watershed in a long-suffering push to end wanton gun violence.

I, for one, hope that they never stay quiet again. I hope, for their sakes (and for mine) that there is never another mass shooting at a public school or anywhere else. But I’m a historian and an educator, not Pollyanna. I cannot afford such a lofty wish, not when there’s so much work to do. That’s why I’m glad that post-millennial teenagers are standing up and taking on this issue. With enough pressure and long-term strategizing, they may well be able to achieve some measure of gun control in the US for the first time in the nation’s history.

Five Stoneman Douglas students speaking out (see names above), February 20, 2018. (http://mediamatters.com).

But we’re not going to get there with mealy-mouthed proposals and idiotic ideas. Arming teachers? Arming veterans as volunteers? Putting more police in schools? Really? How stupid does anyone have to be to believe that more people with guns in public spaces with large numbers of other people to stop a potential threat is a good idea? That’s like saying every country in the world should have as many nuclear weapons as Israel or Pakistan. Because everyone sleeps better knowing that on the wrong day and with the wrong person, they and their families could be vaporized!

Even half-baked measures like age limits, more extensive background checks, and a ban on assault rifles (the old 1994 Brady Bill and the 1994 Crime Bill, really) do little in the end to prevent mass shootings. After all, Jonesboro, Columbine, and the Georgia day trader massacres all occurred between 1994 and when the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004. Even if it was possible, turning the clock back to the 1990s would still mean that most Americans willing to use guns to kill themselves and others indiscriminately will be more than able to do just that.

Though “Never Again” is overused (think Holocaust and 9/11 here), the idea of working without ceasing on making America as gun-free as possible should be the long-term goal. I think that the nation should mobilize for a War on Guns, just like it did in the 1980s for a War on Drugs, and in the 1970s against drunk driving. Only, without an eye toward racial stereotypes of Black pathologies and cultural dependency on the one hand, and the assumption of White goodness on the other. After all, White males own the vast majority of guns in the US. I think that children, teenagers, and the young adults that are part of my son’s generation should lead the charge. Not conservative dumb asses who believed weed was a gateway drug to cocaine and heroin (look where that got us).

Just like we have a Partnership for a Drug-Free America, we need a Partnership for a Gun-Free America. We need graphic commercials demonstrating what occurs when a bullet rips through flesh, disintegrates bone and nerves, and pummels brain matter. We need commercials where a mass shooter kills a bunch of people and then is somehow captured. One where the father asks

“I learned it by watching you, Dad!” PSA, July 1987. (Partnership for a Drug-Free America).

“Where did you get the guns? Who did you learn this from?”

“You, all right! I learned it by watching you!,” the son would and should say.

Why? Because, despite the relatively diversity of the student body at Stoneman Douglas High School and despite the pain of what those students went through, they are hardly alone in their suffering. So many Americans of color know this pain, too, between crime-related shootings in poorer communities and the police state that is all about shooting and killing much, much, much more than deescalation of potential threats. While I would’ve been proud to have a daughter like Emma Gonzales, I also want to not worry that some racist, trigger-happy cop or some random White supremacist/misogynist (the typical profile of a mass shooter) will one day cross paths with my son.

So many Whites know this pain as well. For their access to guns has ripped apart their families, between the accidental shootings, suicides, and family annihilators. So many own guns out of fear of crime (really, a proxy for their fear/hatred/disdain for the Black and Brown) or a need to feel powerful, this despite the evidence that most people never get to use their guns when they are the victims of crime.

What I want ultimately, is the repeal of the Second Amendment. The US needs to go the way of Japan, the UK, and so many other countries, where some older firearms or some guns that are specifically for hunting may be kept, everything else must go. This means no firearms for law enforcement as well. This is what the more radical of us want. This is what Black Lives Matter wants. I’m sure so many who’ve survived these mass shootings would at least strongly consider this proposition.

There will be those who’ll say, “Not a chance in Hell! If someone comes for my guns, I’ll put them in a bodybag!” I’m not arguing the Second Amendment will be gone today. Or that it’ll be gone tomorrow. But with the kind of sustained effort that only youth, mass mobilization, and coalition-building can bring, maybe America can get part of the way there in the next decade or two. Or not.

Jeremy Spoke In Class Today (updated)

19 Sunday Apr 2009

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Tags

"Jeremy" (1992), Bowling for Columbine (2004), Columbine, Dylan Klebold, Gun Violence, OAH Conference 1999, Oklahoma City Bombing, Pearl Jam, Terrorism, The Culture of Fear (1999), Timothy McVeigh, Toronto, Violence, White Angst, White Male Angst


Helena Garrett, right, mother of bombing victim Tevin Garrett, breaks down as she speaks during a ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, Oklahoma City National Memorial, April 19, 2015. (Sue Ogrocki/AP via http://sfchronicle.com).

Helena Garrett, right, mother of bombing victim Tevin Garrett, breaks down as she speaks during a ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, Oklahoma City National Memorial, April 19, 2015. (Sue Ogrocki/AP via http://sfchronicle.com).

Sometimes as Americans we can be so stupid. It’s been fourteen twenty years since Timothy McVeigh left a Ryder van in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building building in Oklahoma City filled with two and a half tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel to blow a tragic hole into it, leaving 168 women, men and children dead. It’s been ten sixteen years since two White male teens decided to lock and load at their high school in Columbine, Colorado, leaving 12 students and a teacher dead, 25 others wounded, all before killing themselves in a blaze of White male angst glory. Yet we’re still up in arms over any significant legislation to keep assault guns out of the hands of folks who may do their neighbors harm, as if the Second Amendment doesn’t itself provide limitations on the use of firearms in our society.

Right now, without any abatement, some idiotic father or mother is so depressed about their financial situation and the future of their family that they’re willing to go into their garage, pull out the 9mm pistol or .45 caliber rifle and take out their children, their spouse and themselves in a public display of psychotic-ness. It’s happened in recent months in Chicago, in Maryland, in California, in Florida, and in so many other places that the public only barely pays attention to it anymore. Then there are the folks who are literally clinging to their guns — if not their religion — because the nuts on Fox News Channel and on the conservative talk radio shows have stirred them up about President Barack Obama. That the Obama Administration had any plans to take people’s guns away from them is about as ludicrous as blaming the grunge group Pearl Jam for the Columbine massacre in ’99.

Cover art of Pearl Jam's single "Jeremy" (1992), September 25, 2005. (Tempuser123456 via Wikipedia).

Cover art of Pearl Jam’s single “Jeremy” (1992), September 25, 2005. (Tempuser123456 via Wikipedia).

To think that it’s been more than a decade since Columbine and that we as a nation have learned next to nothing from it is just a sad commentary on how fearful we as a nation are. I remember as I packed my bags for my presentation at the Organization for American Historians conference in Toronto how the events of Columbine unfolded. One of the first things that came out of the media was that songs like Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” was to blame for stirring the minds of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold into killing and maiming their unaccepting, cliquish classmates. Except that “Jeremy” killed himself in front of his classmates. He imploded — he didn’t take his rage and angst out on the rest of the world.

Harris and Klebold’s disproportionate response had little to do with Pearl Jam or grunge, and more to do with our culture of fear, as explained by Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine (2004) through Barry Glassner’s The Culture of Fear (1999). When combined with easy access to guns and other weapons, it’s no wonder why events like Columbine and Oklahoma City, Virginia Tech and more recent ones in Binghamton, New York, Tennessee, Alabama, Pittsburgh, Oakland, Newtown, Connecticut, Aurora, Colorado and so many other places across the country are happening regularly. Kind of like the bombings and shootouts that have taken many a life of American soldiers while keeping Iraq safe for democracy since ’03. In our case, all it took was a severe economic downturn and the election of President Obama to produce disproportionate fear and rage, implosion and explosion, family annihilators and gun-hoarding psychopaths.

I would’ve thought ten years ago that Columbine would take the Brady Bill passed by Clinton and Congress in ’94 a step further, but it didn’t. I would’ve thought that Americans might become more willing to be introspective in considering the reasons for all of our senseless democracy-based violence. But we haven’t been. We haven’t even conducted national townhalls on these issues. We’ve allowed the NRA, gun-makers and others who benefit from the proliferation of assault weapons to dictate how we exercise our Second Amendment rights.

Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado, April 17, 2008. (Ed Andrieski/AP via http://nytimes.com).

Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado, April 17, 2008. (Ed Andrieski/AP via http://nytimes.com).

There were the kinds of things I thought about during my five days in Toronto, which seemed as far away from the violence and fear of the US as Rome at the time. I also thought about my experiences in middle school and in high school. I wasn’t bullied, at least in not any physical way. But I felt ostracized at times, and I was certainly made fun of more times than I could count. I didn’t have access to guns, and it never would’ve occurred to me to shoot the folks who were clownin’ me. In later years, in seeing signs of the US melting down economically and culturally, it wouldn’t have been in my thought process to blow up a federal building, threaten the president or another public official, or otherwise arm myself for a coming race war or war against the federal government.

No, what I thought about while in Canada was how peaceful and settled it seemed compared to anywhere I’d been in the US. I didn’t feel my skin color or race the way I usually felt it as an American citizen in America. I loved the multicultural atmosphere and the fact that folks truly embraced it there, and not just by serving hummus and falafel at parties and by taking yoga classes. If I could, I’d move all of us up there to live a less fearful and more accepting lifestyle than the one that we can live here.

Ryder truck that Timothy McVeigh drove caught on camera minutes before explosion, Alfred Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995. (http://murderpedia.org/).

Ryder truck that Timothy McVeigh drove caught on camera minutes before explosion, Alfred Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995. (http://murderpedia.org/).

Somehow, some way, we as a country need to find ways to deal with our fear of each other, of failure, of the loss of power and dominance as a nation among nations, as Whites over everyone else. Confronting these fears as part of a public display of transparency and openness will allow for angst without implosion or explosion, and dissent without a turn to ridiculously senseless violence. This is the reason why we have so many dead and wounded every year from gun use (though not usually bombs), in everything from homegrown terrorism to everyday acts of community annihilation. If not, we will continue to serve as a model of first-world dreams and third-world chaos, offering the world not much more than our hypocrisy in the process.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

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Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

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