Talk about Charleston

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, where nine people were murdered during a bible study on June 18, 2015. Photo courtesy of Google.

When it comes to what happened to in Charleston this week, I have — without a doubt — buried my head in the sand. I’m done with that now.

One more shooting and one more round of heart-breaking sadness, discussions about why it happened and what we can and cannot do. It is too much to bear. It is hard to hear when you know that eventually the sadness will be replaced by politics, people will stop talking, and we will wait for it to happen again. I’ve been through this before.

On April 20, 1999, I was just a month out from graduating high school when the Columbine School shooting happened. I worked with a 16-year-old-kid who was murdered that day. The day of the shooting, I worked at the pizza shop, just one wide-open, green space away from Columbine. I was 17, and I stood outside the back of the pizza shop by the dumpsters, smoking a cigarette with shaky hands, and watching SWAT helicopters fly over the high school.

Living in America, if you haven’t had this sort of sadness wash over you at some point, you probably haven’t been here very long. This is one of the things I am least proud about my country for, and let me be clear, I am a proud American.

Since Columbine, there have been 158 shootings in the United States in school buildings alone. From 2000-2013, there were 84 active shooter situations in the United States. This means 84 times where one person killed at least four others in a 24-hour period. When I was 17, I was promised it would never happen again: Adults told me, the news told me, Denver Mayor Wellington Webb told me. They were all wrong.

This topic has become just another one of many in the U.S. that we do not speak about. We can grieve and cry together, but once we get talking about solutions, we purse our lips and bite our tongues. One person brings up gun control and another brings up the Second Amendment and we find out we are different from each other. We part ways and go back to our separate corners of the ring in seething silence. Or we play it safe altogether, we keep it safe and shallow and change the subject when things get tense. In either instance, we wait in silence for it to happen again… and again… and again.

My confidence in politicians accomplishing anything substantial related to this issue is very low, but we can’t leave it up to them. We need to talk about this. The only thing that will break this cycle is for people to come together in the silence between tragedies. But don’t just talk to people you agree with – find someone with whom you disagree and work to find your common ground. Do your best to lower your voice and shut your mouth, and understand where they are coming from. Only then can we bridge the gap between where we are as a country and where we want to be.

We all agree on one thing. No one wants this to happen again. No one wanted it to happen again after Columbine, or Virginia Tech, or Newtown… and today is no different. No matter who you are, we all agree on that and that is where we begin.

Talk about Charleston today.