The Mother of All Mothers

I never understood Mary all that well before becoming a mother. One of many Marys in the Bible, we always refer to her as “Mary, mother of Jesus,” and being cast as the mother of all mothers is not a very relatable lens through which to view her even when you are a mother yourself. Plus it feels like the Catholics called dibs on her, like, a millennia ago, and there’s all these weird lies we tell about her. She’s both daunting and mysterious.

You can fall down a deep rabbit hole on the internet that’s all about the translation of the words describing Mary and whether or not she really was a virgin or young or perhaps simply unwed. Then there’s that whole thing where pretend she was a perpetual virgin and never talk about her other children.

me as an obnoxious baby

My mere existence seemed to irk my siblings.

The Gospels clearly name the four Disciples James, Joseph, Simon and Judas as Jesus’ brothers. I, who made sport of antagonizing my siblings, would be interested in examining the dynamics a familial connection would have wrought on the Disciples. Where’s that show, Netflix?

Basically the things I used to find interesting about Mary weren’t really even about her, and ain’t that a metaphor for motherhood right there?

I once sat in a high school class and listened to the two kids in front of me have a low-talking argument about how many ribs we all have. One said women have an extra set because in the book of Genesis God took a rib from Adam to create Eve. The other kid called bullshit. I felt then the same way I feel now about arguments like that. 

So what?

The number of ribs we each have, or the origins of Mary’s first pregnancy don’t change the overall message of the Bible. I understand that in the early days of Christianity when people were trying to sell others on the awesomeness of Jesus and validate his role as the promised Messiah, that perhaps throwing in “did you know he was born to a virgin mother” may have sounded cool, but did people believe it even back then? It’s clearly a thing invented by men, because only they would miss what’s so crucial about Mary. I mean she did birth babies and keep young snotty children with their terrible immune systems alive before modern medicine, so that in and of itself is miraculous, but there’s more. 

smiling Jesus in robe and red sash resting on sun lounger with glass of red wine in desert, looking at camera

Jesus, pictured on the beaches of Cana,  the morning after that wedding

The Bible often reads like a Steven Soderbergh movie script, dropping you into scenes with no context or background to help. This is certainly true in the second chapter of John when Jesus was attending a wedding in Cana. We don’t know whose wedding it was, or why he was there, or why his mom was there, or his Disciples. But for this particular story, we don’t need to know any of the background, because it’s the one where Jesus turns water into wine. We can all understand how bitchin’ that was. Who doesn’t want a friend with this skill?! All the party invites. Ever.

It’s Jesus’ first miracle, but he doesn’t chose to perform it. He was pushed. When the wine ran out, his mother simply told him, “they have no wine.” We all know how she said that factual statement. The force of a mother’s will is easily discernible to her children with just a look, let alone her tone. Jesus was a bit sassy, replying “My hour has not yet come.” Both Jesus and his mother knew he could perform this miracle, and they knew to do so would change everything. And in the most epically passive-aggressive move ever, Mary tells the servants to take the empty vessels to Jesus and “do what he says.” Jesus gave in. He turned that water to wine because his Momma told him to. 

There’s a lot of unintended conflict and shame thrown around in our modern American conversation about motherhood. I waded into it myself upon first becoming an aunt, then all but drowned in it by the time I started having kids in 2013. The best way I can illustrate this is to tell you about one evening at a women’s Bible study I attended. We were reading a passage about an especially sexist character in the New Testament (I won’t throw share at him because Paul knows what he did), and one woman said, “I have so much trouble examining anything he did because I’m a feminist and always so distracted by what a misogynist he ways.” A chorus of voices joined her, all women of a certain generation who agreed because their’s was the one to break a lot of gendered barriers in our society. They shared experiences where authority figures in their formative years would use things this Bible character said to hold them back. Then one lone, frail voice dissented. She was a much older woman who, it had been easy to learn over the course of several meetings, was still fresh with grief for a husband of over 40 years who had passed. She said, “I was always happy to take care of my kids and husband and the things around the house. I thought I was serving God at the same time. But I guess that’s not okay anymore.” 

There was silence and shocked faces. Clearly none of the other woman intended what they said to hurt. So I said (because I always have something to say), “There isn’t anything wrong with what you did. These ladies are saying it’s wrong to tell women they have to do that and only that. We should have a choice.”

I felt this one deeply because I had the same struggle via the world’s most obnoxious internal dialogue. I’m the willful gal who defined herself with her career, rising quickly in her field, only to walk away from it all upon the birth of her first child. And motherhood wasn’t anything like I’d assumed it would be. 

When my son was first born, I didn’t love him. Of course I didn’t, because I didn’t know him. Yet there was quilt at having this feeling that seemed perfectly logical to me. I did have surging hormones that filled me with anxiety if he wasn’t in my arms, and I often felt a bottomless fear at the thought that he’d be taken from me in a variety of horrible and elaborate, yet equally impossible, ways. I look back now and think what a fascinating adaptation strategy encoded in our DNA. The instinct to protect was there even when love was not. Love came anyway, quickly, but it was muffled by grief. 

I was bereft of a sense of self. One day a well-known and often-consulted member of the campus community where I both attended college and then later returned to work, the next day a stay-at-home mom to a baby I didn’t yet know or understand. 

What I did know is that I had to hang on to myself as tightly as I could. I knew desperately that I could not let my baby subsume me. I had sacrificed pieces of myself to him, quite literally, when he was in the womb, so how easy and alluring it was to sacrifice my identity in the continued creation of him outside the safety of my body. And I saw it happening, in the mothers all around me, but I fought it. 

baby free range

The main downside to being a free range baby is accidentally becoming a card shark.

I vowed never to make my profile picture one of just my children. 

I stood back when he struggled on equipment at the playground, even shooed away other women who assumed I was shirking my duties, because he had to learn to do it himself. 

I hugged and coddled often, so don’t think me a monster, but I was determined my son would be his own person.

And then I read that line Mary says to her son at the wedding in Cana. It was shortly before my son’s first birthday, and f I felt a direction in the haze of new motherhood. Because Mary got it. She knew. 

It is not our job to disappear and become known only as the mothers of our children. We must help our children become who they are meant to be. 

Yes, Mary is the mother of Jesus. But she is also the woman who pushed Jesus to become our Christ as he was meant to be. That’s how I chose to think of her, to remember her. And following her example is how I honor her. 

Mary, mother of Jesus. Mary, compeller of Christ.

OMG, did I just pray?

If you, right now, in this moment of global panic, are feeling alone, stop. We have been here before. Not you and I specifically, but all of us as a human race. As precious and special and worthy of self-care as you are, you are not the first to experience a pandemic, let alone a global-sized threat.

Motherhood

Don’t judge. We’ve all been there.

I have been thinking of my ancestors, especially the strong women just three or more
generations ago, who birthed children in their homes without epidurals and fed a family of 12 without a microwave or refrigeration. Some days my arms get tired just rolling out my yoga mat, and I’ve wondered “how did they do it?” I mean both the day-to-day AND the global pandemics, World Wars, and an Industrial Revolution all while the whole world was one giant mystery because science was in its infancy. 

But I already know how they did it. They had faith. My grandmothers especially, and who do you think they learned it from? The women who came before. Because despite all of the terrible things humans have collectively brought to our religions and done to each other over them, they stick around because they are a comfort to so many.

Many of us today don’t think this comfort is available. I know my friends in politically progressive circles will go out of their way to be inclusive to folks from minority religions, but would feel like a total hypocrite believing in their own family’s Christian faith tradition. Why is that?

In the late 1970s in America a whole bunch of assholes walked into the public square and declared themselves the authority on Christianity. That they did such a thing was antithetical to the very message embedded within the religion itself, but what’s worse is they were fueled not by a misplaced desire to aggressively spread God’s word to others, but out of a need to silence those who they perceived as threats due to their differences of identity and opinion. They had no name for themselves because they didn’t come from established denominations where structures of authority can keep out the crazies. So we gave them names. Evangelicals. Fundamentalists. The Christian Right. They preach a gospel of prosperity to their members, telling poor people they’ll get rich if they just listen and obey hard enough. They tell rich people they are favored by God and anyone trapped by our shitty economic system is there by their own fault. 

Counter Protester

Yikes. Who invited this guy?

In the political sphere they define themselves by who they hate; the impoverished, queer folks, refugees, women who make all sorts of personal choices of which they don’t approve, and any racial or religious minority whose very existence brings their hypocrisy to light.

So I get it. Nobody wants to get in on that.

It’s even worse if you have experienced personal or familial pain at the hands of someone who wielded their Christian faith like a weapon.

But I bet sometimes, in those moments of desperation or exasperation, you find yourself talking to God. You might scold yourself, and wonder if you’re going off the deep end because “OMG, did I just pray?” You probably have been spoked by this happening lately,in this global time of panic and grief, when you’re confused by the duality of being scared shitless but also loving the time to spend connecting with people in newer and deeper ways. After all this is how humans come to religions; with fear and great joy.  

I tell you now that it’s okay. It’s okay to both feel this way—to be weary of any acknowledgement of God and yet hungry for the comfort you know a little faith can provide.

I tell you now to say “fuck it,” forget everything you’ve ever heard about God from others and speak to God yourself. Use those mindful meditation tricks inspirational memes have taught you and manifest the shit out of a prayer. 

Because why let some assholes keep you from God? Sure, they say they’re the authority, and they’ve narrowed the definition of “Christian” to a noxious idea, but their scheme is the oldest one in the book. 

If this were a class and I asked if anyone could tell me about a time in human history when a group of people claimed themselves the arbiters of religion and that they, and they alone, could grant you access to God, every hand in the room would go up and they could all signal different answers. You can’t let that obnoxious #blessed neighbor with the caked make-up, or your uncle with his racist Facebook posts, or that Jabba the Hut cosplayer in the White House keep you from God. Don’t let them win.

When the angel (or perhaps angels, who knows because the books of the Bible are as contradictory and imperfect as we are) appeared to Mary Magdalene in the empty tomb and told her the good news that Jesus of Nazareth was risen and now Jesus the Christ as had been foretold, he said “Go, and tell the others.” 

We all know that sentence didn’t end “Go, and tell the others that corporations are people my friend.” Nor did he say “Go, and tell the others to make concentration camps on your border because Lord forbid we have more brown kids running around our country trying to live their lives.” He didn’t say “Go, and tell the other that ALL lives matter.” And he sure as hell didn’t say “Go, and tell the others that anyone with an interesting sex life should feel as if they are vile.” A great source of love and comfort, and a vehicle to do real good in this world, has been stolen from us modern, empathic, do-gooders in America by people who claim their evil is righteous. They berate you with cherry-picked scripture, and I get that it feels like you’re supposed to cede authority on this topic to them. 

But they are wrong. And there are theological arguments to make against them, mainly because they love misinterpreting the Original Testament. But they also claim to be Christians, and Christians acknowledge the Original Testament is the Law and Jesus gave us the Gospels to free us from the Law. But you don’t need to get into all of that just now. All you need to start is the simple understanding that none of that is God’s deal. Its our mess. The result of this big, beautiful, confusing, and dangerous world God created but does not Lord over like some reality TV show host. God’s power isn’t that he doles out cash prizes or roses or pain and suffering like some Goodle ad algorithm. 

God’s power is that God is there with each and every one of us at all times. Not like some creep lurking around, but a partner baring witness in our most self-destructive and vulnerable moments, or reveling in our joy and ecstasy. God sees everything and yet remains with us. The personification of unconditional love.

Portrait of pensive or sad young woman sitting at sidewalk cafeYou don’t need to make some declaration about believing this. You don’t need to stop your bad habits or even pretend you’ve stopped them. You don’t have to talk about it with anyone, or say it out loud. Faith isn’t something you do. It’s something you have. 

Through faith you will be saved by God’s grace. Saved from your own worry and doubt. Saved from the kind of self-loathing and regret that keeps you up some nights, or sneaks in to pleasant moments and ruins them. God has bigger things to worry about. Believe that and you’ll take one big breath without all those tiny weights on your chest. And what is life if not leaps of faith with the ones we love? 

 

 

Let’s remember Columbine correctly.

It’s another Columbine anniversary, and as my kid makes his way through public schools it’s hard to avoid one of the massacre’s biggest legacies; the anti-bullying movement. My district uses Rachel’s Challenge literally founded to honor one of the victims by naming a school-based behavior modification program after her. And while I can’t say there’s anything wrong with teaching kids not to bully, I feel it’s a disservice to think of Columbine in this way.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not victims of bullying, and it’s dangerous to keep alive a narrative that tells kids shooting a bunch of classmates is an established redress for the perceived wrongs done to them.

Harris was a psychopath. His parents were too proud to use mental health treatment, and they took advantage of their frequent moves around the country to hide his history of disturbing and dangerous behavior. Klebold was experiencing major depression and journaled his suicidal ideation. Together they were an especially dangerous combo who had easy access to guns and also made their own explosives.I feel like we owe it to everyone involved to remember the story correctly.

They weren’t the first school shooters, but they did spark a fire that’s still burning. We’ll never learn how to put it out if we lie to ourselves about what happened.

Recommended Reading:

What’s so funny about wearing a MAGA hat to endorsement day?

…and other questions Eileen Kelly doesn’t know how to answer.

Photo from the NY Daily News.

What were you attempting to accomplish with that bonkers news conference on Feb. 19? If the goal was to further divide local Democrats while demonstrating the decorum of an 8th grader who won a hotly contested race for class president, then congratulations. You could also have simply yelled “suck it, losers,” while making a crotch chop and accomplished the same thing.

Are we supposed to take you seriously when you say there’s no need for reform? You claim to have no power to address the fact that a white committeeman from Greenfield assaulted a 13-year-old black boy on a playground in front of his sister, and continued to do so even when police arrived and told him to stop. And you see nothing wrong with an organizational structure that renders you, the party leader, powerless in such a situation?

Why is there no grievance process in the by-laws? You have a whole area of the suburbs where women and people of color are harassed and threatened out of the party by a serial bad actor. You know about this man because women have come to you with tweets and text messages and voicemails demonstrating his campaigns of intimidation. I know because I was one of them. There was no official way to lodge a complaint and receive protection. We were told nothing could be done because the by-laws don’t address his egregious behavior. Many of us paid for speaking up. Committee membership should not come at the expense of your professional or personal reputation, and it most certainly should not cost your sense of physical safety.   

If the by-laws are your gospel, why do you not enforce them? Oh wait, is the answer to this one that you can’t enforce them because they’re so shitty there’s no process to report a violation and no recourse to address one?

Why doesn’t the committee support candidates and elected officials? Why didn’t the Ross committee support all local candidates who won the Primary? Why did a local House candidate, endorsed and voted for in the Primary, tell me he couldn’t get you to return his phone calls in 2018? Why is a committee chair allowed to tell the whole county he has $50,000 for anyone willing to primary a candidate he doesn’t like, and then call that candidate a criminal on social media? Why is the committee actively working to oust an incumbent House member when we are so close to flipping that House? Speaking of Summer Lee…

Are you bothered by racism? When you first hired an executive director (without posting the job or accepting applications) he was a man with a demonstrably racist history on social media that advertised his commitment to oppression IRL. Did you truly not know about this? Are you unsure how to do a quick Google search? Or did you simply not care? It took quite a while for you to get rid of him.

Can you share with us your working definition of racism? In a society it is incumbent on white people to unlearn racism and seek out the responsibilities inherent in our privilege. So when a large portion of your committee members ran a black woman out of a state senate race, how could you allow it to go unaddressed? Even if you didn’t understand it, you heard her description of what she experienced.  

Why do you offer no educational programming for your members? There is a whole industry built upon educating businesses and organizations on issues of diversity and inclusion. You even have members within your committee who could carry out such programming if you only listened to them and were transparent about your needs.

Why are you not serving the best interests of Democrats in Allegheny County? We live in an increasingly diverse and ever-changing world where automation and rising inequality are bringing out our worst impulses. You stoke these fires, and you do it with a righteousness that would make Donald Trump proud. 

What is the purpose of the ACDC under your leadership? You have no way to raise money other than gouging candidates for a chance at endorsement, and then again for the privilege of being on a slate card that your municipal committees may or may not have enough active members to hand out at the polls. Your members are mostly inactive, with their involvement confined to attending back-slapping breakfasts and dinners with the same muckity-mucks. You have no volunteer apparatus to offer candidates who need door knockers and phone callers and donors and postcard writers. You can’t articulate a platform to unify the County. You refuse to engage with the countless new families moving to the greater Pittsburgh area for its thriving tech economy and growing energy industry. You don’t even know how to capitalize on the influx of volunteers who seek to make a difference in the Trump era; you treat us with scorn and suspicion. 

So what exactly is it that you’re doing? That one’s a serious question, because we need competent, incorruptible governance to keep our democracy alive and you have proven yourself not up to the task.

Jen Partica, resigned committee member from Moon Township

Open Letter to my fellow Democratic Committee Members: Jan. 28, 2019

“Open Letter to my fellow Democratic Committee Members in Pennsylvania’s 37th State Senatorial District” was posted to my campaign Facebook page on Jan. 28, 2019 along with this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Fellow Committee Members,

I know many of us are hurting after yesterday’s nominating convention, even those who supported the winning candidate. While some of us want party leaders to redress our grievances, and others want to temper discord in the pursuit of party loyalty, we must collectively reckon with the worst of what we did yesterday; we scared a candidate out of running because of her race and gender.

Nothing can excuse what we did to Ms. Benson. No amount of good work on our resumes, allegiance to progressive campaigns, or prior votes for non-white politicians justifies the pain we’ve caused and the damage we’ve done.

If you think a “good question” to ask a candidate is how will she win as a black woman, and/or if you think Ms. Benson dropping out of the race was an acceptable result of people asking that question, then I respectfully thank you for your past service and ask you to resign your committee membership. Make room for someone else. There are people wishing to join our committee who understand that fighting racism and sexism isn’t a goal for future “safer” elections—it is the point of the present.

INTENTION NEVER TRUMPS CONFIDENCE
No matter how justified and well-intentioned we may consider ourselves to be, if our actions make a person feel unwelcomed and unsupported then that is not okay. And when confronted with this reality, it is not acceptable to erase Ms. Benson’s experience by attempting to justify our actions.

We cannot be a party that allows this. We must be a party that seeks to know and understand our own personal and institutional flaws. We must all work to eradicate racism and not because we need non-white people to vote for us, or because it makes people of color uncomfortable, or even because it makes many white people uncomfortable; we must do better because it is the only way to achieve our goals of equality and opportunity for all.

OUR RESPONSIBILITIES
There is not one among us who is solely responsible, but neither are any of us innocent. That’s why it’s our responsibility to hold ourselves accountable, and to hold each other accountable.

Are you aware of your own biases? Your own privileges? We all have them. When they are presented to you, as they were yesterday, do you sit with the discomfort and seek to understand it? Or do you immediately become defensive?

If you were a person who asked Ms. Benson how she thought she could win in her own district as a black woman
OR
if you are someone who thought of this question but never said it out loud
OR
if you are someone who hears it now and considers it valid
THEN
ask yourself why you believe this question is valid? What would you learn by asking it? The answer was clear in her candidacy. She would not have run if she didn’t think she could earn votes.

Even if we had the powers to divine that Ms. Benson’s race and gender would make it difficult for her to win, then I think the solution is clear; campaign harder, volunteer more, and dig deeper in conversations with our neighbors throughout the district. But as it is now, we’ll never know. We never gave ourselves that chance because we showed a highly qualified, proven leader that we aren’t ready to support her.

-Jen Partica

“Our lived experiences shape us, how we interact with the world, and how we live in the world. And our experiences are valid. Because we do not experience the world with only part of ourselves, we cannot leave our racial identity at the door. And so, if a person of color says that something is about race, it is—because regardless of the details, regardless of whether or not you can connect the dots from the outside, their racial identity is a part of them and it is interacting with the situation…We are all products of a racialized society, and it affects everything we bring to our interactions.” – Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

Remarks from Pittsburgh’s Memorial for Victims of Gun Violence

Remarks from the Inter-faith Memorial for Local Victims of Gun Violence 

Heinz Memorial Chapel  /  Pittsburgh, PA  /  12/14/18

Heinz Chapel Outside 12_14_18Welcome. One of tonight’s co-sponsors is a group I’m proud to volunteer for – Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. We started just 6 years in the aftermath of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary by a suburban Mom in Chicago. We now have groups in every state and our supporters number more than 5 million making us a counterweight to the powerful gun lobby. 

Locally we’re busy, functioning as 3 teams—North Hills, South Hills, and Central—educating, organizing, and empowering people to lobby their elected officials for sensible gun safety legislation. My name is Jen Partica and I am proud to co-lead the Central Team with the incomparable Diane Matway who sits here in the front.

My family moved to Western PA two and a half years ago and settled in Moon Township, and on Monday night our town experienced gun violence. A man visiting another in his home at night, stabbed the homeowner and the homeowner shot his visitor. The home owner later at the hospital from the stabbing, but the visitor survived his gun shot wounds. 

After those facts, things get murky. Rumors are running rampant around town about the circumstances surrounding the incident. People speculate as to whether or not anything shady or illicit proceeded the violence, and I have to say I find the inquiry rather exhausting & distasteful, because the undercurrent there is questioning whether or not the victims “deserved” what happened to them. 

And I don’t believe violence is EVER deserved.Me at Heinz Chapel 12_14_18

We do this a lot in our country. When our communities look different our gun violence looks different, so we explain away this public health epidemic by finding reasons to justify it in the neighborhoods where we don’t live, in the victims we don’t identify with. And it is this very sick ability to bargain and barter with our morals, to assume the standing to judge others, to determine who “deserves” violence, that allows a man to feel justified in entering a place of worship and massacring a large number of people he’s never even met based solely on their religious identity.

And in the wake of such violence, our response awed the world. But there were some in our city that asked why we do not mourn for all victims the same. And I don’t know all the answers to that question, yet I still understand it. 

Our group has heard this question before, and our annual memorial here is one small way to answer for it. Because tonight we will read the names of ALL victims of gun homicide this year in Allegheny County. We read them all because NONE of them deserved it. No matter their age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, criminal record, or neighborhood, not one of them deserved to be shot and killed. 

So I ask you tonight to open your hearts to the victims you know well—and to the victims you know not at all—and to recognize that while we are not solely responsible for the violence in our communities, neither are we totally innocent. 

To recognize that not one of us is immune to gun violence.

So when you’re ready to take on the responsibility of addressing this issue, to help others bare this weight with the strength that only love can give you, CeaseFirePA, and Moms Demand Action, and groups like us are ready to welcome you to this fight. 

 

Celebration w/ Bloomberg

bloom selfie

Me and fellow co-lead, Diane Matway, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. A.K.A. my Bloomberg selfie

The following are remarks I delivered on Oct. 21, 2018 as the Co-Lead of Pittsburgh’s central team for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America as part of a celebration for the signing into law of Pennsylvania’s Act 79 of 2018 to disarm domestic abusers. We were joined at our celebration by Michael Bloomberg, former NYC mayor & founder of Everytown for Gun Safety, Everytown’s President John Feinblatt, Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto, survivor Gina Pelusi, and two student leaders from the Univ. of Pitt’s Student Demand Action team.

“Welcome everyone! I’m Jenny Ruth Partica, the Co-Lead of our central Moms Demand Action team here in Pittsburgh and I want to thank you for coming today. I have never been more excited to get a party started!

I have been a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for 2.5 years. As a mother, my first priority is the safety of my children. And as a gun owner, I know we can support common-sense gun safety measures while also respecting our Second Amendment rights. 

I’m glad we are gathered here today to reflect and celebrate on the work we’ve been doing. Because every time there’s a shooting, it impacts a whole circle of people in its proximity, whether there’s a death or not. And our city has been rocked by some especially tragic shootings this year. We all see the headlines on the news — and we also know there are far too many shooting tragedies that never make the headlines.  Like so many of you here in the audience, myself included, you came to Moms Demand Action because you were angry, righteously so, and you were scared. You said “I want to do something. I feel powerless and I want to make a change right NOW.”

And then we looked at you, and we said “I understand. And what I need you to do right now with that conviction is I need you to call your local state senator and demand action.

Advocating for gun safety legislation is not always glamorous and it can be tedious. The victories can take time. It’s the first time you call your representative’s office and don’t have to give your name because they recognize your voice. Or it’s that time you pull into the driveway after picking your kids up from school and you see a notification on your phone that causes you to jump and cheer as you get out of the car your neighbor shouts over “What is it?”  and you respond “My bill’s going back to the Senate for reconciliation!!”

Just last week, we saw our demands for action come full circle with a MAJOR victory for gun safety in Pennsylvania. Governor Wolf signed legislation to disarm domestic abusers. We have worked at this for years, and you have trusted us along the way. You’ve trusted that each little step was productive. That every call for action was necessary. I’ve seen so many of you get involved in advocacy for the first time because of this bill, and I know that can be intimidating and I am so proud of every phone call, tweet, share on Facebook and every conversation you’ve had about this bill. 

I am a woman of faith and I believed we would get here. When we feared the bill would waiver we all kept the faith. When the local gun lobby spread lies about it. We still believed.  

I had faith that you, and lawmakers like (NAME ELECTEDs IN ATTENDANCE) and our partners like Rob Conroy from CeaseFirePA, and Nicole Molinaro Karcazun from the Women’s Center & Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, and law enforcement, like Sheriff Bill Mullen, and all the other groups who joined us from across the state, I had faith that we all believed in this bill. And if we stood up, and showed up, shouted about it long enough, everyone else would follow. Because how couldn’t they? How can you say no to a bill that disarms domestic abusers?

 

When I tell people I’m a volunteer lead in a gun violence prevention program, they say “wow, that’s really brave.” But I don’t feel brave doing this work because it seems so obvious. The goals all of us share, the common sense steps we want to take to reduce gun violence, they seem so obvious to me that I can’t help but have faith that my fellow Americans will agree. But what’s obvious can take time, and we’ve all learned that with this bill. So let’s take some time to congratulate each other, to thank each other, and to recharge so we can keep going. Because we did it!”

 

 

Essay in Yellow Arrow Journal

Pleased to announce I have a new essay published in the latest issue of Yellow Arrow Journal. You can visit Yellow Arrow Press’s website to order a beautiful hard copy of the journal, purchase the Kindle version, or learn more about this fabulous mag and other projects from the publisher.

The essay, “Susquehanna,” deals with a period of time when I lived on the Susquehanna River. It begins with the memory of a neighbor apologizing for hating me, something her rehab program was encouraging her to do, yet I had never spoken to her until that moment. It comes in at just under 1,000 words and is accompanied by some outstanding works from fellow prose and poetry writers. Grab your own copy today!

“Bullets Into Bells” event in PGH

I had the honor of participating in The Bridge Series’ event at City of Asylum in Alphabet City for the book “Bullets Into Bells,” an anthology of poetry and essays addressing gun violence in America. The book was edited by Connecticut poet Brian Clements, husband to a teacher who survived the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. We were joined by my friend & survivor Gina Lodato Pelusi, a leader for Pittsburgh’s Moms Demand Action teams who captivates a crowd with her story of love, loss and hope. I joined Brian & Gina on a post-reading panel as both the co-lead for the local Moms Demand Action and as an contributor to the online conversation happening on “Bullets Into Bells” website. A collection was taken at the door, and $260 was donated to Moms Demand Action.

I am continually humbled to be involved in this work. I feel inspired by everyone who shows up and asks how they too can get active, because we can end gun violence.

Photo Credit: City of Asylum

Welcome to the Movement to End Gun Violence

“If Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were alive today, they’d be my age,” is what I say because using terms like “gun violence prevention” and “activist” just elicit drawn out ohhhhhs and wows from people stumbling through some awkward variation of “thank you for working on that really important issue.” But wow isn’t in reference to importance; it’s in recognition of danger. Then there’s a turn, a distinct switch to gossipy whispers as they ask why I became an activist for gun violence prevention. What happened to me? I see a series of images in mind, each a reason why, each either too private to tell or not mine to tell. So I pick a story that makes me seem like the vapid white suburban lady who knows nothing of gun violence aside from what she sees on the news. I pick a story that belongs to us all.  

A year before Columbine, there was Jonesboro. Two boys attacked their middle school, one pulling the fire alarm, the other a sniper on the perimeter picking off kids as they filed outside. I was in 10th grade. The next time the fire alarm was pulled at my school, I walked outside with two friends. One led us to the center of the crowd. “Better get in the middle in case one of us turned psycho overnight and is across the street with a deer rifle,” my friend said. We laughed. I added, “It’s funny ‘cause it’s true,” and we laughed even harder.

The day after Columbine, things changed. The mood, most of all, changed in our school. Our spring-time tradition of Color Week, filled with pranks and intra-class water gun warfare, was suddenly not so innocent. We lost freedoms we didn’t even know we enjoyed. We were locked up, but in no less danger. 

Have I mentioned I went to high school in Amish country, where a man would massacre a school full of girls a few short years later? Or that I was on the college campus where I worked, listening to the eerie tests of a new emergency

broadcast system blaring from campus-wide speakers, when news of Virginia Tech broke? Or that I was 8 months pregnant with my first child when Sandy Hook happened? Or that my son came home from daycare the Monday after the Pulse nightclub shooting, told me how safe his school was, and I couldn’t agree with him? 

It wasn’t any one of those that made me finally join the movement. It was all of them, and more. 

Can I tell you about the unfathomable shame I felt the first time I attended a memorial for gun violence victims in a black neighborhood? The first speaker looked at my friends and I and said, “Oh good, white people care. Maybe now something will happen.” It was a punch in the gut, and I deserved it. 

Communities of color have long endured an epidemic fueled by illegal guns, obtained through shitty laws and loopholes kept in place because there’s profit in their death. I feel the awesome weight of responsibilities white people have shirked for so long, in so many ways, on this subject and others. But we also applied this violent indifference to our own communities, endangering  ourselves too. In our wake, no one is immune. 

I am not solely responsible for this, but neither am I innocent. I have long felt an internal rage for being so foolish for so long. I feel this rage for others too, for the people desperate to get involved after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. I welcome them, joyously, at meetings and rallies and online forums, because we need them. But I’m still pissed. Do they think Parkland’s teens are the first ones to feel this way? I hear that the outspokenness of high schoolers has woken people up, headlines read “now there’s no more excuses.” I wonder what were the excuses when I was afraid of being shot in my high school? These aren’t the first students to live with this fear. If I give voice to this resentment, will it turn people’s anger inward when it should stay focused on the gun lobby?

If Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were alive today they would be 36.

When my son enters kindergarten in the fall he’ll practice ALICE drills, hide in the closet of his classroom and be scolded silent because everyone’s pretending an active shooter is on campus. He’s sure to come home and talk about it. He’s sure to notice that once again his mother can’t assure him he’s safe. He’ll be the second generation of his family to live with this fear. The second generation to go to school with the understanding that evil can walk in, armed with military-style weaponry, and massacre him along with his friends. The second generation to know that the leaders of his country can’t be bothered to value his life. 

Is this the time to tell you I’m a gun owner? That’s really why I joined the movement. As a white, suburban mom I know the gun lobby pretends they speak for me, and most people assume they do. But the gun lobby speaks for gun manufacturers, so I bear the responsibility to make it known otherwise. 

When I tell people I work on gun violence prevention because I’m a gun owner, they are always surprised. I want to look at them and say, “I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. My family hunted to fill our freezer each winter. Of course I own guns.” So many Americans do own guns. Pretending this is a “gun owner vs. anti-gun” argument is to prolong it, to play into the hands of those who profit from our fear and our deaths. We are part of the problem when we are unable to imagine anything other than this typical “us vs. them” debate that turns Americans into extremists. So sometimes I short-hand it and say, “I’m a gun owner, not a monster.” 

My activism is comfortably occupying all my conflicting identities while educating and organizing people to lobby their elected officials for effective and sustainable legislation. I wield the privileges my race, income, and zip code afford me. I recognize I’m armed with this power by an oppressive and unjust system, so I must use it for the good of those in more danger than I am.     

There is evil in this world. While we’re squabbling among ourselves, unable to imagine a society with more than a dichotomy of parameters, that evil has access to high-powered firearms. When I want to know about evil, I turn to my church. When I want to keep evil from obtaining lethal weapons, I turn to my government. I hound my government. I badger my government. I nag, pester, and bother. It’s not glamorous or sexy. It’s often tedious. It never feels like enough, but it works. Slowly than it needs to, but it does work.

Let this be our call to action. All of us. Disarm our rhetoric, our keyboards, our agreements to disagree. Disarm our violent resentment towards communities that look different from our own. Demand our government, our elected officials, our leaders protect us from evil. Show up, again and again. Evil will always be among us, but our government can keep it from waging war so efficiently, so effortlessly, for so long. Believe it. Commit to it. Now.