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gun control

19 thoughts

May 25, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

When I wake up early in the morning for a meeting with my team in the states, one of the first things I do afterward is visit the 8YO’s room. She claims she will wake up at 6:30am to read; she is a voracious reader. The alarm goes off, and she shuts it off and continues sleeping. “No reading today?” I’ll ask, as I give her a kiss on the cheek.

In 2012 when the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting happened I remember sitting numbly at my desk at work. We were just one month pregnant. “How can you send a child to school in this country?” I thought to myself.

She likes to have a whole orange sliced up into wedges at part of her lunch, no matter how incongruous that is with the rest of lunch. But, you have to transfer each half orange as a perfect bisected globe onto her plate so she can be surprised anew that it’s actually comprised of wedges. She’s a slow eater. So slow that I can cook my lunch, eat, and tidy up while she’s still eating. Yesterday I finished all of that and then stood behind her chair, my hands resting on her shoulders while she ate.

In 2015 when the Charleston church shooting happened I remember solemnly saying the victims’ names out loud to keep their thought alive.

In 2016 when the Pulse nightclub shooting happened I was a stay-at-home parent. I remember watching the Democrat filibuster in real time while tweeting and blogging about it, and calling my Senator and representative. I was crying so hard that day that I think I asked someone else from the family to visit to play with the kid. I remember thinking, “How can you raise a child in this country?”

In 2017, almost exactly five weeks ago to this very day, E had a job offer in New Zealand.

In 2017 when the Las Vegas concert shooting happened we had just moved into our first house in New Zealand. I remember frantically checking on my former bandmate, Ashley, who was in Las Vegas and attending that music festival. She was already on her plane home, and it was one of the longest days of my life waiting for her to land and reply to my messages.

In 2018 when the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting happened we hadn’t even been in New Zealand for six months. I remember thinking, “even after Pulse, nothing changed.”

Later in 2018 when the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting happened I remember loading and reloading the profile of a friend in Pittsburgh, only for him to later affirm he was okay but that was his synagogue on his block.

In 2019 when the Christchurch mosque shooting happened I was sitting at my desk at the Ministry of Business, less than 10 feet from the Chief Executive of the ministry, watching as her office transformed into the war room. I felt physically sick. Didn’t we leave America to move away from this?

Later that same day, Prime Minister Jacinda Arden told our nation and the world that New Zealand’s gun control laws would change.

Just 18 days later, all but one member New Zealand’s parliament voted in favor of a ban on (and buy-back of) semi-automatic weapons.

I saw news of a shooting in Philadelphia and rushed tearfully to Facebook to check that my friends were all okay only to realize it was a headline from several years ago. It had already happened, I had already grieved it. I just didn’t remember. There have been so many mass shootings in the United States this year alone that I cannot remember them all and the ways they all made me feel. I can’t remember all of the places I’ve been when I heard about another shooting this past decade. I can no longer remember all of the names and stories of the victims that seemed so indelible to me at the time. I still say their names when I look them up to remind myself.

Yesterday as news emerged that 19 children and 2 teachers had been killed in the Uvalde, Texas school shooting I stood at the kid’s chair, my hands resting on her shoulders while she ate. The kids were her age, in her grade. 19 children. 19 families who would never get to linger in these little moments with those children every again.

10 years ago I wondered if we could raise a child in a country that would allow Sandy Hook to happen and not doing anything to change it.

5 years ago we decided we could not.

Today we live in a country that has banned the kinds of weapons most often used to perpetrate these murders.

Every day I live in grief for every child who has died to gun violence in America, but also for those who walk into school each day wondering if this will be their day. Children younger than my own child. Children who I know and love and children I’ve never met.

Every day I wish America would change.

Filed Under: essays Tagged With: gun control

Review: The Private Eye by Vaughan, Martin, & Vicente

June 23, 2016 by krisis

Lately, I trust journalists less than ever before. Or, maybe I trust them, but I don’t trust the stories they’re telling.

filibuster-interactive-data

Last week during the gun control filibuster on the Senate floor I compiled the names and demographic information from all the participating Senators, and my friend Lauren created an interactive infographic with the information. I did not read a single media story that named all of the participants after the fact.

I know this is a theme in conservative American politics right now – the bias of the mass media. I’m not talking about bias. I’m talking about facts.

The past few weeks have been full of big new stories nationally (Orlando and gun control) and locally (sugary drink tax and the DNC), and the biggest of those stories have been missing so many facts. They’re all headlines and quick hits. Hot takes with no depth. No quoting from primary sources. Lots of people coming away with incomplete ideas and parroting them as reality.

Those same weeks have also been full of truth. I become deeply invested in last week’s filibuster from the floor of the Senate and did not consume a single pundit’s take on it. I watched it live and was my own pundit. Yesterday’s sit-in in the House circumvented pundits even further – it couldn’t even be broadcast by networks because the House was out of session and cameras were off, so representatives broadcast it directly to the public via Periscope, cutting all all possible middlemen.

Of course, the next day journalism swept in – but, as a first-hand witness to the events in question, I found the subsequent coverage lacking. Where were the names of the participants, the lengths of time they spoke, the information they shared? I put more information together about the filibuster with data visualization from my friend Lauren than I saw from any news site!

I don’t trust journalists or I don’t trust the stories they tell, but I can hardly blame them. After all, I have a journalism degree and I never set foot into that field. I went CorpComm because I wanted job security and a standard of living, and that was before online outlets were effectively subsidizing their print editions and running on pay-per-click ad units. But I still believe journalism should represent unfiltered truth with a neutral point of view, unless it professes itself as opinion. I had a lot to say about the filibuster, but none of it made its way into the data.

What if journalists didn’t have to worry about the funding and the hits, and could focus on terrific journalism? There are some outlets today that fit the bill, and I don’t think it’s coincidence they produce some of the most thorough reporting. I know it’s hard to picture state-run journalism, because so often it’s journalists who expose the flaws in the state, but that’s one version of what I’m talking about. Instead of asking journalists to make personal sacrifices to do what they love and write for maximum eyeballs, imagine a minimum number of reporters guaranteed on each beat, with job security, fair pay, and a retirement plan.

Do you think the journalism would get better or worse? Does it take sacrifice to want to dig as deep as journalists dig? Or, would the skill and commitment increase?

The-Private-Eye-hardcoverThe Private Eye 3.0 stars Amazon Logo

The Private Eye collects the 10 chapters of a complete web comic story by Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente.

Tweet-sized Review: The Private Eye finds Vaughan & Martin a bit too clever for their own good; I liked the world better than the story

CK Says: Consider it.

The Private Eye is a much more interesting world than it is an interesting story – and, it’s a pretty decent story.

Private Eye is an Eisner and Harvey Award Winning comic story conceptualized by Brian K. Vaughan and created in collaboration with Marcos Martin and his wife, colorist Muntsa Vicente. It was initially released beginning in March 2013 as a web-only comic via Panel Syndicate, with its 10 chapters released across 24 months. Each chapter was available as a DRM-free as a pay-what-you-will download.

You can still purchase it that way, or you can opt for a gorgeous $50 hardcover version released in December that includes the complete Vaughan/Martin email chain conceptualizing the story and their method of release (complete with fretting over what to call the website and how to make a profit from it).

The story of Private Eye depicts an America where the press has taken over peacekeeping for the police thanks to a landmark omni-leak of every possible piece of data. The event, called “The Cloudburst,” exposed everyone’s online information to everyone else. It wasn’t the leaked account balances or private nudes that did everyone in, but the search histories. It turns out that was as close as you could come to knowing what was going on inside someone else’s head – their deepest fears and desires. A lot of those heads were pretty dark places. [Read more…] about Review: The Private Eye by Vaughan, Martin, & Vicente

Filed Under: comic books, journalism, news, politics, reviews Tagged With: Brian K. Vaughan, data, filibuster, gun control, journalism, Marcos Martin, Muntsa Vicente, Panel Syndicate, Senate, The Private Eye

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