Students Demand Action have called a national student walk out April 5. If you are in school or have a child in school, join them. If you are a teacher or know one, support them by walking out yourself or calling in sick.
One organizer said that if Tennessee lawmakers “actually cared about protecting kids” they would “address what kills kids every single day” instead of banning books and drag shows. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for U.S. children. But Florida just quietly legalized concealed carry for everyone without any permit or training.
The second amendment was originally written so that state militias could respond in defense of democracy if the government turned into a tyranny as England had done. Now the second amendment has been perverted to give individuals a right to guns so they can overthrow the government and create a tyranny.
The culture wars attacking CRT, LGBT, drag, and women’s reproductive autonomy are an excuse to use violence to destroy our democracy. These wars are being fought at the legislature but also on the street. Recently the Bridge, a small religious cult in Tucson supported by the Proud Boys, waged a campaign of intimidation against Bookmans because of a scheduled drag story hour. Because of the threat of violence to individuals, the story hour was cancelled.
A trans event in Washington, D.C. was cancelled last weekend due to threats of gun violence. The dog whistle was that the shooter at the religious Covenant School was allegedly trans. In the last 41 years, 98% of the mass shooters have been men. At least 51% were white with 10% unknown. But you never once heard the white supremacists crowd suggesting we keep guns away from white men.
But of course none of this – banning books, prohibiting language, refusing to teach about racism, prohibiting women and LGBT people from determining their own health care, or having people in costume (other than a clown) reading to kids – is about protecting children. The same legislature that banned abortion banned fetal medical care. The same legislature that bans books bans free lunch for hungry kids. Their goal is not to protect children but to control society and force us all into their dystopian view of the 1950s.
In response to this violence, our federal and state law enforcement look to the left rather than the right. During the 1960s when the left was protesting the Viet Nam war, the FBI instituted a decades long infiltration of social change organizations (COINTELPRO) ranging from the National Organization of Women to the National Lawyers Guild to Martin Luther King Jr. and SCLC. They found nothing of note. We know today they are doing the same; inserting agents into protests and creating the very violence they then blame us for.
I participated in many a protest since the 1960s. Some of them were against businesses like gun shops and pornography stores. But three things are different from the actions today by the white supremacist groups.
If members of our group decided to break the law i.e. do civil disobedience, we knew it was against the law and expected to be held accountable. Those threatening and using violence today have no respect for the law and believe they can violate it with impunity. They are often correct.
We took great effort not to harm individuals but only to target property. This group is just the opposite. Their aim is to harm individuals.
We protested actual events – the Viet Nam war, Jim Crow, beating women. The white supremacists are protesting lies – lies that they make up and then use as the backdrop for their manufactured outrage. Elementary and secondary public schools never taught CRT. Yet they seek to ban anti-racism curricula because of their own lie. Drag story hour never sexualized or groomed children. Priests, pastors, coaches, child beauty pageants, pornography does that quite well. Yet they use their own lie to threaten harm to others.
The federal authorities have known for decades where the threat is now as then – white supremacists’ groups then called the KKK and White Citizens Council, now called Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3Percenters, and various religious cults like The Bridge. But law enforcement continues to focus on the left. Anarchists, Black Lives Matter, and Students Demand Action are not threats to democracy – they are working to create and sustain it.
This is the second Civil War. By the use of street violence white supremacists intend to overthrow democracy as the Brown Shirts did in Germany. We must maintain our democratic principles while using the institutions of democracy. But we realize that some of those institutions of democracy are already thoroughly corrupted, and we have to battle that as well. We are all called to the ramparts. Join the student boycott April 5, support Bookmans, oppose our legislature.
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How effed up is Tennessee? Gun cult worship trumps First Amendment free speech, and the will of the voters in electing their representatives. “Tennessee GOP Moves To Expel House Democrats Who Called For Gun Control”, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tennessee-republicans-expel-democrats-school-shooting_n_642bc494e4b00c951753cd9c
Republicans in Tennessee took steps to expel three Democrats from the GOP-controlled state House for speaking at a gun control protest following the shooting at a Nashville school that killed six people, including three children.
The saga began last week when the Democrats — state Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — led protestors in a string of chants on the chamber floor without being recognized to speak. Hundreds gathered at the Capitol to call for gun restrictions after the shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville.
The action violated chamber rules, and Republicans filed a series of resolutions Monday to expel the three Democrats for “disorderly behavior” that “knowingly and intentionally” brought “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives.” The GOP holds a supermajority in the Tennessee House, with 75 of 99 seats.
Final votes are scheduled for Thursday, when the three lawmakers will be able to defend their actions. They’ve already been stripped of their committee assignments.
The expulsion move prompted fury on Monday, with protestors yelling at Republicans and calling lawmakers fascists from the galleries in the Capitol, The Tennessean reported.
[E]xpulsion of an elected Tennessee lawmaker is exceedingly rare, The Associated Press noted, with only two House lawmakers ousted since the Civil War. The most recent, Rep. Jeremy Durham, was expelled in 2016 after he was accused of sexual misconduct.
Our kids should strike every day until America takes their safety more seriously than the ‘rights’ of those who get a kinky thrill by firing a gun. I wholly support their right not to be under threat of death every day just by going to school. But there is simply no way to make our schools more safe from gun violence than by making the communities in which those schools are embedded more safe from gun violence as a whole. The idea that we can protect schools by extraordinary methods – arming teachers, increasing security measures, more school resource officers, etc. – is, at best, myopic. Schools will only ever be as safe as the communities they are part of.
Banks are protected by armed people. Politicians are protected by armed people. Government buildings are protected by armed people. Are kids less important than these? Or kids should be protected by armed people.
Anon Y Mouse is saying we should arm the school kids. That’s the logical conclusion.
Okay, starting at Kindergarten or maybe wait until they have enough strength to deal with the recoil?
Or, crazy idea, maybe we have less guns. At least less guns in the hands of crazy people.
No one in America needs an AR-15. Most people who own guns don’t need them at all, they’ve just been brainwashed by the NRA into thinking they’re saving America from dictators.
The Constitution actually has that covered.
We do need more people who can actually look at the problem and see the connection to every school shooting.
Guns. Guns guns guns goddamn fucking guns.
Other countries don’t have this problem, and they have video games and mental health issues and unlocked side doors.
The problem is guns, America’s unhealthy obsession with them, and freaks who think their right to a military weapon outweighs everyone else right to go to school or church or their job and not get killed by one.
Look up what an AR-15 does to the human body and then get back to us.
Spoiler, they liquify a human body. A child is left in literal pieces.
I go on too long, I know, but Anon Y Mouse, these kids that have active shooter drills and then go home to see school shootings on the TV are going to be voting in 20 years, give or take.
Do you think they’ll vote for the people who want more guns and make them live in fear or the folks who want them to live their lives without getting turned into jello?