I often talk about how things are intensifying. I wrote a whole big list of “big picture” stuff this weekend in this post, so I won’t repeat it all here.
Yet… it’s a lot. It’s more intense than anything I’ve seen in my five decades. I’d guess it’s similar for a lot of you reading. We’re doing a call this afternoon in a few minutes if you’d like to chat about all this, too.
Yet Another Mass Shooting Of Children
Today’s fresh horror includes news of more children killed by a mass shooter. Today in Nashville, 3 kids and 3 staff have been killed by a mass shooter who is now dead.
There are so many mass shootings up in this country that they don’t all get real-time media coverage. That seems to change when there’s some kind of “exception.” Because mass shootings are now the “norm.”
Today, very young children have been killed. Again.
There are no words, but this is the country we’ve created. This is who we are. It doesn’t have to be who we stay. I’d argue that we’re not going to change it doing the same things we’ve done before… because we want different results. Thus this scourge of gun enablement up in this country is one of a zillion things that inspire the work here at Shift the Country.
We’d like to help the majority of Americans get more fired up about all the things… to help us collectively raise holy heck and get enough voters out to enable this dysfunctional democracy to work better by winning enormous majorities in the next election. That’s what’s behind all this.
What about if we raised all kinds of ruckus about mass shooters and guns and trauma in schools and wanting to stay alive in rallies, vigils, and picnics all over this summer?
What about if we started talking more about what it takes to survive these incidents, and how to mitigate death if — heaven forbid — we find ourselves in a mass shooting? Doctors say it’s critical to stop the bleed before people lose too much blood. We could train folks to do this in case they find themselves in a mass shooting situation. It could save lives, and raise even more awareness of what American kids and all Americans face.
We have options. We can do other stuff, too. We have very big brains and can get creative. We can raise a ruckus, and we can drive the narrative.
Join in on our call series linked in the button above to get into this stuff. We’ll be talking about raising a ruckus this summer on Thursday afternoon and evening this week, and every week through May.
We can ramp up a heck of a racket. We can reach more people than we’ve reached before. We can put pressure on businesses that support pro-gun legislators. We can help motivate political leaders to get out and fight more on this issue. We can help get way more voters out to vote with all this fuss in 2024.
Trump’s Doing Stochastic Terror Again
Twice-impeached and likely soon-indicted ex-president Trump was inciting violence again this weekend at his first rally of the 2024 campaign in Waco, Texas. Yes, it was deliberately symbolic to be in Waco.
Some media reporting has been giving his campaign the benefit of the doubt, which isn’t helpful and which we could call them out on.
The reality is that Trump’s cabal includes people who know damn well how to speak to the audience he seeks… which includes far-right extremists of the sort who a) showed up at the insurrection he inspired, and b) get fired up about anti-government sentiment like what came out of the Branch Davidian stand-off and massacre in 1993.
Authoritarians are sometimes able to seize power because the populace and other leaders are too terrified to stand up to them. It’s can be critical for someone trying to pull off an authoritarian power grab to keep the population shocked, disengaged, and frozen. Therefore, it makes sense that he would want to have extremists fired up and actively supporting him. Terrorism can be very effective. It’s a tool, and he’s using it. He’s using it by doing his 2024 kick-off event in Waco, and by using coded wording to encourage followers to do violence. That’s stochastic terror.
Trump took his prior shocks even further, as is his habit. He gets away with one set of alarming things… so then he does more alarming things. We get numbed to it. It’s too much to address, too. The volume and level of absurdity is so high. He just keeps plowing forward. Plus, he’s got everything to lose, so he’s going to go all out.
In Waco, he said Americans including Mitch McConnell are a bigger threat to the US than China or Russia. Mind-blowing. Yet by this point we’re so numbed and conditioned that it isn’t breaking headline news everywhere.
Part of how we can push back on the intentional freeze, trauma, overwhelm, and attempt to keep people in their hidey-holes is to push community and connection.
Once again, our Shift the Country events are set up to help, and to help people do the same kind of thing in communities everywhere. Join an event this spring and learn more. Or just get connected and be part of community.
We’re just ramping up.
Tornadoes: Send Money Not Stuff
The tornado damage in Mississippi and Alabama from the weekend is breathtaking. I offer this quick advice:
Send money not stuff.
Check out National Organizations Active In Disaster (NVOAD) to find a list of reputable groups working on disaster response to send funds to support these tornadoes.
Don’t. Send. Stuff.
If you’re interested in volunteering, NVOAD has a great list of orgs to volunteer with. If you are a first responder, check with your local agency and/or state to deploy via national mutual aid through EMAC.
Don’t self-deploy. It is not helpful in a huge array of ways. Go with an organization that’s set up to help in catastrophe areas where everything is harder because of the disaster.
Another helpful option is to donate blood if you’re in a position to. We’re always in need of it as a society regardless of whether it ends up going to this particular disaster.
Here’s a video we did from Hurricane Ian with more background about why we say to send money not stuff. Fits any disaster. Same issues.
And please share this post. We’re seeking donations, too, so we can fight for better government for the intensifying disasters to come.
Be safe, be well, and join in on this shift.
We’re going to do big things, even in the midst of chaos.
So glad I had the opportunity to participate in yesterday's Zoom call! There is so much to be done, and it takes each of us being willing to do our part. I hope more folks show up for the calls the remainder of this week...and then let's all help make shift happen!