Posts Tagged ‘activism’

A Year Without A School Shooting

Posted: August 26, 2014 in Living and Life, Politics and Leadership, Reflections, Social Activism
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Tonight is the last night of summer break, right before the new semester starts. Later I’ll be cracking open a beer and savoring what will most likely be the end of my last summer break before heading to bed. And all around Ohio State, all around Columbus, all around Central Ohio and even farther beyond, many OSU students will be doing the same or similar things, finding ways to relax and get mentally prepared for 16 weeks of classes, studying, part-time jobs, campus events, clubs, trying to eat healthy, not fall off the wagon, maybe talk to that special person you keep seeing around campus and maybe see if a romantic relationship is in the cards.

What none of us want to have to hope for though, is something that we should all be hoping and working actively towards: a year without school shootings.

I know that’s a somewhat silly thing to hope for. According to StopTheShootings.org, since 1992 we’ve had 387 school shootings in the United States since 1992, or about 17.6 a year. Most of the shooters tend to be between the ages of 10 and 19, the same age as a majority of victims. And children ages 5-14 are apparently thirteen times more likely than children from other industrialized nations to be murdered by guns. Statistically speaking, we’re up against some tough odds.

So what can we do to minimize shootings? I do not feel that making guns easier to get hold of is a very good option. Do we fight arsonists by lighting fires ourselves? Or do we stop thieves by stealing from them? Clearly not. Improving mental health is one option that has been advocated for (and is the only one Congress has actually gotten their lazy butts up to pass). Still, mental health won’t make the problem go away. We hear reports every day from Chicago of inner-city violence being committed with guns. In fact in the past twenty-four hours 2 people died and ten wounded from guns. Clearly, not everyone in Chicago who’s fired a gun is mentally unstable or challenged, so more must be done.

Clearly, no one wants to think of a campus like this as the possible scene of a shooting. But nevertheless, reality dictates we consider the possibility for our own safety and the safety of others.

Another option is placing some limitations on what is portrayed in the media. As much as I hate to admit it, there has been correlations between amount of violent content taken in while watching TV or playing video games and aggression. However, that is only showing the correlation between violent content and aggression, not gun violence. People who get aggressive playing games don’t necessarily become killers, and violent content doesn’t always lead to thoughts of murder, if it ever does. Or in short, correlation doesn’t mean causation. Not to mention that media is often a reflection of the society it is created in, so it seems unfair to artists who are trying o create a harmless representation of their worlds because it might contribute to real world problems. And if we were to police media that could cause violent conduct, we’d have to start with the Bible, because long before guns became an issue, the Bible was encouraging people to kill in the name of God, and in far greater numbers.

A third option is placing limits on guns, where they can be sold or distributed, what sort of guns are available, and where they can be openly carried or who can carry them. Studies show that states with stricter laws of this type have lower rates of murders or suicides because of guns than states without them. And a vast majority of Americans support laws like universal background checks, even within the NRA. And in Australia, the number of mass shootings fell steeply after they initiated a ban on automatic weapons. Clearly placing restrictions such as these might be helpful in reducing gun violence.

We don’t want to see any more memorials like this one created after Sandy Hook, do we?

Sadly, there’s a huge lobby against stricter gun regulations in the United States, and more laws seem to have been passed that have eased gun restrictions rather than tightening them. I don’t want to go into the arguments these lobbies have given against tighter regulations, but it is troubling that a lobby made up of companies that sell guns are advocating for laws that will increase their sales. The best way to combat this sort of lobbying might be in cutting corporate influence in elections and lobbying, but of course that is another difficult and controversy-fraught issue altogether, so I won’t delve into that either.

Finally, some have suggested training school officials in firearms or hiring full-time security guards. While I’m sure there are teachers who would be willing to be trained in firearms and keep them in the classroom, I’m sure there are plenty of teachers who would not feel comfortable with firearms in the same building as them, let alone in the same classroom. Some would even refused to be trained. And even if there were teachers or faculty willing to be trained and keep guns in the classroom or office, there are security risks to this method, especially if students were to get their hands on the guns. And while I like the idea of a trained officer or several on campus to protect students, some school districts do not have the funds to pay for a full-time security guard. And in overcrowded school districts, particularly ones with histories of gang violence, it’d be difficult to check students each and every day for firearms.

Perhaps the best option would be a combination of all of these. Sure, implementing any ofthem would require a lot of work, cooperation, dedication, and compromise on the parts of several people and parties, but in the end, a combined approach to a problem often yields more results than a singular approach (especially if that approach features some major logic flaws). And in the end, working together might bring together this highly fractured country and make it a bit more unified than it’s been in recent years.

So let us work together. Let’s stop the partisan and ideological bickering to start working on a solution to a horrific problem. Eighteen shootings are supposed to happen this year. That’s eighteen tragedies we can avoid. Even doing minor things like teaching children about gun safety or by forming neighborhood watches can do worlds of good. Because our children, and the nation at large, deserve so much better than another Virginia Tech, Columbine, or Sandy Hook. At least, that’s what I think, as I hope and pray for a school year without a shooting.

Please note that I will be screening comments for this post, so be aware that any comments that I find insulting, unacceptable, or off-topic will be deleted immediately. Thank you for your participation in this ongoing discussion.

I Can’t Help But Put Social Themes in My Stories

Posted: August 24, 2014 in Reflections, Writing
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As of last night, I’m a little more than halfway through editing Video Rage, the sequel to my first novel Reborn City. It’s been a long and slow process, not helped by work, preparing for the new semester, and the general craziness of life itself. Still, I am making progress. And I have become a bit more cognizant of the fact that I like to make issues that are important to me part of the stories that I write.

I’ve mentioned this before, but RC and its sequel VR have a lot of themes in them that reflect societal problems we face today, including Islamophobia, racism, and drug addiction, among a few others. I thought that these were the only book I’ve written where these issues have become so embedded within the story’s narrative, but then I realized that wasn’t the case. Snake, my other novel, explores the trade in human beings and in flesh, albeit slightly less prominent due to the focus on a certain serial killer.  And Laura Horn, the novel I finished last month, stars a main character who suffers from the trauma of sexual assault. Even Rose, the novel I’ll be writing for my thesis, has a lot of themes reflecting issues that I find important, including gender dynamics and women being viewed solely for their biology, domestic abuse in relationships, and even gun violence*.

*Speaking of which, I have a post about that. Remind me to write about it later this week.

I think I write in all these themes into my stories for a number of reasons. One is because a lot of what I write is taken from today’s world. You look around you, and you’ll see the world plagued by many issues that are not easy to solve and nowhere close to being solved. Often I will write a story and the problem can either be inserted into the story or it just evolves its way in, showing up throughout the story. Another reason is that, as an author, I have the potential to influence plenty of people through the words I write and the stories I tell. If I can do some good through that, then why shouldn’t I? Third, sometimes you feel so upset about the problems yourself you can only vent about them through words on paper, which is something I sometimes do. And fourth, because I can.

In any case, I look upon this habit of mine as beneficial. Like I said, inserting issues such as racism, gun violence, LGBT rights or whatever into my stories has the potential to perhaps do some good in the world and allow for discussion that sometimes is stifled out of fear or because of strong emotions (or because being politically correct can make you feel like you’re walking on eggshells). And besides, I think it makes the plots of my stories much better. Rose originally didn’t have the gun violence aspect to it, but when I realized that it could make things in the story more interesting and allow me to flesh out the main character more, I decided to go with it, and with fantastic results too.

And if the reviews I’ve gotten on my books are any indication, people like my books better because I add in these issues.

Do you insert issues important to you in your stories? What issues and how do you put them in? What have the reactions been like?

Editing a Key Detail in “Video Rage”

Posted: August 18, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Social Activism, Writing
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I’m about a third of the way through editing Video Rage. And while I was editing Chapter 12 yesterday, I had a bit of a problem that I had to really rack my brains to solve.

Does anyone remember the Kony 2012 video from two years ago? If you don’t, here’s a quick reminder: Joseph Kony is an African warlord leading a terrorist organization that recruits children to be soldiers and sex slaves. The video Kony 2012 exposed many people to Joseph Kony’s crimes to many people in the West for the first time, amassing nearly 100 million views and becoming one of YouTube’s most viral videos ever. However, despite a powerful Stop Kony campaign, a Cover the Night event, and a sequel to clarify points made in the first video, interest in Joseph Kony and Invisible Children, the organization behind the video, waned after questions of the legitimacy of the campaign came up and the video’s narrator/producer suffered a very public mental breakdown.

Maybe it was because I was really impacted by the video at the time, going out of my way to make a Kony 2012 T-shirt and participating in Cover the Night, but when I decided to make an original viral video in Video Rage, I wanted to use Kony 2012 as an example to compare to the viral video in the story. So I wrote it in, ignoring the reservations I had about using such a famous (and infamous video).

Well, perhaps there’s some truth to the phrase “Another year older, another year wiser.” I was 20 when I wrote that chapter, but I’m 21 as I edit the novel. And I decided to cut Kony 2012 from the story. It’s just that a well-known video like that being featured in my novel might do more harm than good, especially considering everything that went on in the aftermath. So I ended up replacing it with a fictional documentary that I made up pretty much while editing. It took me a while to come up with the subject matter behind the documentary and what it did to achieve the level of fame that it would inspire a viral video in the novel’s universe nearly forty years later, but I finally managed to come up with something that I was satisfied with. And hopefully any future reader will be satisfied with it as well.

So what’s the point of this post? I’m not sure there is a point. Maybe I just wanted to tell you all a story while letting you know how the editing for Video Rage is going. Or maybe I was trying to illustrate how something that seems like a good idea when you’re younger or at an earlier stage of a project (or both) can really seem like a bad idea later on and you just have to nix it. (Strange that Stephen King didn’t think of that when he wrote in that scene in IT with the kids all having sex with each other).

In any case, I’ve fixed what I considered to be a great problem with that one chapter of Video Rage, and I think that the rest of the draft will go smoothly…if I can stay on track with finishing the second draft of the book.

Well, that’s all for now. It’s late, so I’m going to bed. Have a good night, my Followers of Fear. I’ll update you on Video Rage and anything else that needs updating as time goes on. In the meantime, pleasant nightmares.

My Own Take on the Hobby Lobby Case

Posted: July 15, 2014 in Politics and Leadership, Social Activism
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I know I’m a little late to this conversation (though I did post a lengthy message on my Facebook page when it first happened) and I would’ve written a blog post about this sooner, but I’ve been busy with other work. Well, better late than never. Besides, Jon Stewart managed to make some jokes on it last night, so I can do it tonight.

There used to be a time when religious liberty meant that you could go to church ro synagogue in peace and without fear of ridicule or attack. Where your religion didn’t bar you from certain neighborhoods or trades. Where you didn’t have to wear a yellow star, and you didn’t suddenly have to leave country or convert in order to avoid death and suffering.

When the hell did it change that a couple of people could make decisions about the health of thousands of women?

As noted above, a lot has already been said about the Hobby Lobby case. However, I’m going to go over it because I find the majority ruling of the Supreme Court simply infuriating.

First off, Hobby Lobby says that it doesn’t want the federal government to force them to hand women employees birth control. Um, the people who will be handing birth control over will be the pharmacist. The insurance company your company uses will actually be paying for it, drawing on the money every employee puts into the company insurance policy to pay for the birth control. So basically everyone who’s on Hobby Lobby’s health insurance policy would be paying for the birth control. The fact that only a few people at the top can decide what everyone is paying for in their health insurance worries me somewhat.

Second, the owners of Hobby Lobby are objecting to contraceptive pills that “cause abortion”. Most fertilized eggs actually self-abort and don’t embed themselves in the uterine wall, so maybe you want to protest whatever mechanism causes that? Also, the pills that “cause abortion” actually a bit of a mystery, as scientists aren’t sure how they prevent pregnancies. So maybe you might want to figure that out before you start a lawsuit? Especially since you still cover Viagra and vasectomies, the latter of which basically makes the testicles useless and gives seed nowhere to go to procreate. I think the Biblical term for that is “spilling seed”.

Continuing on with this, I’m not so sure Hobby Lobby actually objects to birth control pills, as some of the companies, trust funds, and other financial mechanisms its owners have fingers in actually hold stakes in pharmaceutical companies that produce these very pills that are being protested. Is it really protesting on religious grounds to provide abortion pills? Or is it something about not having to pay for a product you already own?

And I’m really worried about this decision, which opens up some serious floodgates for lawsuits. The term “closely-held corporation” is a pretty loose definition. Already we’ve seen evangelical colleges asking to be exempt, and other companies as well that one wouldn’t normally think of as “closely-held companies”. Under the loose definition though, they might.

And if religious liberty can be used as an excuse to get out of covering contraception or other “objectionable” medical practices, what’s next? Catholics are against all forms of contraception. Jehovah’s Witnesses are against blood transfusions. Scientologists are against psychiatry. Christian Scientists generally don’t like traditional medicine. And what about objecting to other things based on religious belief? Other laws? What if a family bakery that got incorporated decides not to make a wedding cake for a gay couple because they believe it’s a decadent lifestyle? What if a print shop refuses to print flyers for an event hosted by the local Wiccan community because they won’t “help witches and Satanists”? As Justice Ginsburg said in her dissent, it’s a slippery slope.

All in all, I’m really troubled by the implications of this decision, besides the fact that a few people, mostly older white men, are getting away with making medical decisions for thousands and thousands of women and thinking that is okay. It’s already hard enough to purchase safe, affordable birth control, and some people need the help of an insurance company to afford it. Some of these women aren’t even taking birth control medications to avoid getting pregnant! Birth control medication is good for regulating menstrual cycles, prevent endometriosis, reduce the pain of cramps or migraines, and even fight acne! Most women actually take the pill for multiple reasons, studies find.

And they can’t just go looking for another job that offers birth control on the insurance plan. Some women can’t afford to leave a job because it’s all they have. The job market is still rather difficult these days, and leaving a job to look for one that might offer the right insurance isn’t exactly like walking through a park. In fact, it could lead some families to financial ruin.

Now that I think about it, most of the women who will be most affected by this decision will be women in the lower-middle, working, and poverty-stricken classes. Meanwhile, the rich can still easily afford birth control should they desire it, or own the companies that produce birth control. This si not just starting to resemble a new battle in the war on women, but also a form of class warfare and keeping the lower classes in their place. And I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s thought this.

What say you on the Hobby Lobby case? Where do you see this going in terms of consequences?

(Be aware I will be screening comments. So if I get the kind of comments from people who can’t bear any opinion but their own, it won’t show up on this blog)

My Affinity For Female Protagnoists

Posted: June 22, 2014 in Reflections, Writing
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I do a lot of female leads in my writing And for some time now, it’s been bothering me. Not the kind of bothering like “I’m a dude, I should write more male leads”, but the kind of bothering where you ask every four-year-old’s favorite question: why? Why do I feel such an affinity towards female leads? And why do they always seem to come into the story with some baggage or that they get baggage early on in the story?

I’ve been wondering about both points for some time, and I think I might finally have some answers. For why I prefer using female protagonists, I think it has a lot to do with my childhood. I grew up in a family with a lot of women in it. That has some upsides and some downsides, one of the upsides of which being that I had some very good examples of strong women right in my own home. My mother is a woman rabbi and became ordained in an era when there were very few women before her or with her in that role (there still aren’t many women rabbis, but there are certainly more than when my mother was ordained). And sometime after she divorced my dad, she became involved with another woman, who I’ve come to look up to as another mother. My mother’s partner is an accountant, and was there countless times when I was having trouble with math throughout middle school and high school. She was also one of the people who taught me to play sports during the few instances where I showed an interest in sports (rare instances, but thy exist).

Besides my family, some of my childhood heroes were actually heroines. Growing up, I was very big into shows with girls who could have normal lives one minute and kick monster ass the next. This primarily involved Sailor Moon and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both of which I’m still huge fans of (by the way, Sailor Moon is getting an anime reboot next month. If you haven’t guessed, I’m kind of counting down the days till then). Besides sometimes having really creepy monsters and awesome battle scenes, these shows portrayed women as more than just screaming damsels in distress who need a man to help them. They show women able to fight back as well as have real character development and  growth. With all these influences, it’s no wonder as a writer I tend to write more female protagonists than male.

And I think that that’s a good thing, really. If you look at our contemporary media, you see several more men than women as leads, and generally the men are much more developed. Sure, there are women like Katniss Everdeen and Black Widow or Mystique, but the former seem very underdeveloped in Books 2 and 3 when you consider how she keeps going back to her romantic issues and how her life is mostly manipulated by powerful men, and the latter have yet to have their own solo films. Recently there’s been controversy over the new Assassin’s Creed game not having any female leads, and most video games still don’t have as many female playable characters as men, and those that do don’t always take the time to develop their leading ladies. To be sure, there are a new class of women (particularly women of color) emerging in the media who are portraying women in strong, positive, fully-developed roles, such as Olivia Pope in Scandal, the detectives from SVU, and even the women from Orange is the New Black. But there is still a long way to go, and the landscape is still very uneven.

Even though my work is only read by a small amount of people at this point, I like to think that with the large number of female protagonists I write (and hopefully received as well-written role models) is helping to correct the problem and give more girls what I was given at a young age, which was some great examples of strong women.

As for the whole thing with the baggage that a lot of my characters come with, I think that can be said for a lot of writers. Let’s face it, authors tend to have their characters come with baggage. Maybe they’re orphans, or they lost a loved one, or they have a dark past with family issues or drugs or something. I think that’s because we like our characters to be a little broken, in order to make them more identifiable and to make it easier for us to facilitate character growth. Honestly, I think it’d be more of a challenge to give a compelling story with development and growth to a character who doesn’t have anything worse than clinical depression or a tendency to pig out on junk food.

In any case, I’m happy to say I now have a better understanding of myself. I look forward to seeing what I can do and what I can write now that I have a better understanding of my process and the sort of characters I create.

Well, that’s all for now. I think I’ll sign off now and watch some TV. Have a good night, my Followers of Fear.

A Biblical Reinterpretation of Homosexuality, Part 1

Posted: June 16, 2014 in Living and Life, Reflections, Social Activism
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With the Columbus Pride Festival coming up this weekend, LGBT people from around the country (including George Takei as Grand Marshal for events this year) will be descending upon Columbus for a huge parade and festival to celebrate their sexual orientations, fight discrimination and injustice, and to push for same-sex marriage in Ohio, which is on the ballot this year. It’s sure to be a great time for many.

For some though, the Pride Festival will not be so welcome, and while Columbus may be one of the Midwest’s LGBT hotspots, there is the very real chance that protesters will show up and decry what they see as perversion, sin a horrible lifestyle, or some sort of disease/genetic defect/psychological disorder. Usually I ignore these sorts of people, but I figured that since I’ll most likely be attending the Pride Festival this year (my first), I thought it would be interesting to do a post on these protestors, most of whom have a Biblical basis for why they’re opposed to homosexuality, and show how the Bible could actually endorse homosexuality rather than outright ban it.

Before I do though, I wanted to post this video I found, which I think is very eye-opening, and gives some very good points on the Bible and homosexuality:

Interesting, isn’t it? And that thing about Sodom and Gomorrah mirrors pretty closely what I learned growing up about why those cities were destroyed. In fact, I remember a pretty graphic tale about how two girls met at a well, one realized the other’s family was very poor and gave her some flour for her family. When the town elders heard about it, they basically took the first girl and stoned her in public (I’m not sure what happened to the second girl, but she probably came away from that emotionally scarred and still hungry, if not dead). And if you want to know more about that book they talked about in the video, here’s a TIME magazine article on it.

I would like to add some points on to these, based on my own upbringing, experience, and understanding of the Old Testament (I’m not very familiar with the New Testament of course, being Jewish). First, that famous verse in Leviticus that anti-gay pastors love to quote, “Thou shall not sleep with a man as thou sleeps with a woman”. First off, what can women do? Second, this sounds like a prohibition against homosexuality, but it could have other meanings.

Of course, there’s the anatomical one: men can’t sleep with other men like they can with women, because men don’t have vaginas. But I’m pretty sure that argument, although obvious, won’t sway many people, so here’s two more that might. Firstly, there’s the patriarchal argument: women in the days when the Bible was written were expected to attend to their husband’s sexual needs, and most likely that meant they had no say in it unless they were impure and couldn’t have sex anyway. In an age where men were expected to be dominant in all matters, especially in the home, forcing one man to attend to another man’s sexual needs at the latter’s beck and call would be considered the ultimate emasculation, so therefore sex between men was forbidden.

The other reason (and the one I feel makes the most sense), is based on pagan idol worship. Many Near East and Mediterranean societies practiced homosexuality, not as a distinct orientation, but as an activity. The Greeks were famous for having relationships between other males before marriage, and there were other societies at the time that had cultures that permitted men to have relationships with each other before or after marriage. Some of these relationships were especially prevalent in military circles to increase unit cohesion, and a few were ritualized in the form of idol worship. God would have seen this latter act, worship of idols through sexual intercourse, as detestable, so He created a form of worship and sacrifice that did not involve sex, and forbade a form of sex that does not lead to procreation, as well as because it was used in idol worship.

There’s a pretty big difference between this and emasculation or idol worship, wouldn’t you say?

Since today there is no idol worship through sex (as far as I know), it would be permissible for same-sex relations to occur. Besides, these interpretations deal with a form of emasculation or idol worship. They do not apply to men, women, or other gender-types who are in loving, committed relationships like we see today.

There are other factors to consider here as well. For example, there is the belief that marriage should be as it is in the Bible. If that’s the case though, why do we outlaw polygamy and women can choose who they marry? Not to mention the definition of marriage and marriage roles have changed throughout the years, so it’s no surprise that it’s being changed in our day and age and “pro-marriage” activists shouldn’t be alarmed. And even if not always legally accepted or endorsed by religious establishments, same-sex relationships have been taking place for many, many years. There have been relationships between high-ranking clergymen and other men since the early days of the Church, but it was tolerated because of fear of worse sins, ones that at the time that were considered venereal.

Even during waves of religious upheaval, reformation, or resurgence, same-sex relationships flourished: Queen Elizabeth may have been a lesbian, and several members of her court were gay and able to get away with it due to their status. King James–of the Bible translation–actually had several relationships with men as well as women. And recently there was an article from The Boston Globe about two women who lived together and were treated as married…in 1807! So even if it’s not exactly legal, same-sex marriage is not exactly as new as cell phones.

This post is getting very long, so I’m going to continue this discussion in another one. I hope some of you who read this post found it informative and may have given you some food for thought. I don’t think it’ll sway anyone who’ll protest at Pride this weekend, but it may sway some people who are undecided on the issue. Or that it may prove helpful for those who want to try to reconcile homosexuality with religion.

Oh, and before you wonder what sort of religious authority I am, I can only say that I’m the son of two Conservative rabbis, I went to a Jewish day school from Grades 4-12, I’ve gone to synagogue for most of my life, and I still learn and keep in touch with my religion. So I may not be a rabbi or pastor, but I’ve done as much studying as some, and more than some others. I guess I can speak with some authority on these matters. What do you say?

*I will be screening the comments for offensive, inappropriate, or just plain rude comments. Be warned.*

Another Shooting Happens. When Will Change Happen Too?

Posted: June 5, 2014 in Living and Life, Politics and Leadership, Reflections, Social Activism
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This afternoon I found on my news feed that another college, this time Seattle Pacific University, was hit by a gunman. Details at this point are still few, but what is known at this time is that one person has died, three more are in the hospital, and that the gunman was disarmed by students while reloading his gun.

While I’m glad that nobody was hurt, I have one question: is it enough yet? Because it’s only been a couple of weeks since Elliot Rodger went on a shooting spree in his black BMW, killing 7 people around UC Santa Barbara because, as he said in a very creepy YouTube video, “girls aren’t interested in me”. And these are just the most recent: Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, the Sikh Temple, and even more that I may have missed. The point is, we have a serious gun problem here in the United States, as well as a serious opposition to seeing any sort of change to try and stem the bloodshed. In fact, only a couple of states have enacted any sort of gun legislation, such as background check and limitations on ammunition or automatic rifle bans. Other states have actually made it easier to get and carry guns around, and the federal government has bowed to the pressure of gun lobbies so that no legislation has gone through on that part.

Look, I know that as a nation the United States is slow to do things that are vital to protecting the health of its current and future citizens. Our healthcare is still tied for 37th place worldwide, our welfare system loses funding every year as well as our education system, and the road to environmental reforms designed to stop climate change is like climbing a mountain sometimes. But honestly, we’ve lost so many lives to gun violence in so many years, and every time, everything from the media to lack of God to making gun pictures in school is blamed, but guns are not. Legislation dies, the news moves elsewhere. And every time the event repeats, more people shout “Enough is enough! We’re tired of this!”

Indeed we are. And we’re tired of the rhetoric against gun control. “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” If that’s so, do toasters not toast toast, but toast toasts toast? “Gun laws don’t work, because people will still break the law to get guns.” And people will still buy meth even against drug laws or run red lights against traffic laws. Maybe we should get rid of law altogether. “We have a Second Amendment right to guns.” That amendment was written when the worst you had was a hunting rifle, that rifle could get your family food for the week, and the state might call upon you at any time for a militia. Not to mention that a handgun does just as much damage to an intruder in your home as an automatic rifle, which is actually worse for hunting than just a regular rifle. And you know what else is a right to us as Americans? Freedom of speech, but the Secret Service will still arrest people who say they will kill the President or anyone else in high office.

Look, I’m not saying that we should lock away every gun in the United States and only let the military, police, or the government handle them. But I think some common sense laws would do a world of good. Several other developed nations have gun control laws, and remarkably, their levels of homicides and suicides with guns are much lower than that of the United States. Surely we can do the same and be even better at it, if the USA really is the greatest nation in the world?

Or are we going to let some more shootings happen? Where will they happen next, I wonder? Perhaps one will happen in my backyard, near where I live and go to school. Or one will happen on Capitol Hill and scare the bejesus out of every senator around. Or maybe at another elementary school! The point is, the way things are it’s very easy for these shootings to happen at all these locations and more! Airports, grocery stores, office buildings, subway systems, libraries, apartment buildings–stop me anytime!

None of us want this to happen again. But unless we enact some long-term change, gun violence will continue to be a constant problem in our nation, and will claim the lives of so many more. And that’s something we just can’t keep allowing if we’re to continue on as a country, especially one that the rest of the world looks to a lot as an example of what it means to be a superpower.

Oh, and I just want to mention one more thing: two girls, much more influenced in their crime by violent media than any other killer I’ve seen so far, nearly murdered their friend after stabbing her 19 times in the name of Slender Man. I garauntee you, if she was shot with a gun even once, she probably wouldn’t have survived. And the man who attacked a bunch of children in China with a knife around the same time as the Sandy Hook massacre? All of those kids survived too. Just something to chew on.

A Tribute To Maya Angelou

Posted: May 28, 2014 in Journalism, Living and Life, Reflections, Social Activism, Writing
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Dr. Angelou, reading her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at President Clinton’s 1993 inauguration.

As I booted up my laptop today and logged onto the Internet from my hotel room in Germany, I was greeted by the most depressing news: author, poet, activist, and just plain wonderful human being Dr. Maya Angelou had passed away. Dr. Angelou, who had been teaching at Wake Forest University since 1982 and was a prolific writer and poet throughout her life, had been experiencing health problems recently and had had to cancel several scheduled events because of it. She was 86 years old at the time of her passing.

Immediately I felt  a horrific sense of loss. I never met Dr. Angelou, nor have I read as much of her work as I’d have liked to. But I remembered very vividly reading I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings one summer for school a few years back, along with The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Both books impacted me very deeply and I remember feeling powerful emotions reading Dr. Angelou’s book as I read the events based on her early life experiences, sadness and sympathy and anger and several others depending on what story she was relating to me through her words. It left a very deep impression on me.

And so when I heard that Dr. Angelou had died, I immediately felt the loss that people around the world are probably feeling at this moment. I took to Facebook to write that the world has lost a guiding light in Dr. Angelou, that her passing was swift and painless, and that her memory, words and deeds will last for centuries. But somehow I felt it wasn’t enough, so I decided to write this post about her as soon as I could. Hence this post you are reading now.

Dr. Angelou was an influence for good throughout the world. She worked her way up from a variety of jobs, including a cook, prostitute and nightclub dancer, to become a writer and journalist. Active in the Civil Rights movement, she worked with both Dr. King and Malcolm X, and has also influenced the feminist movement. Her writing has been hailed as “a work of art that eludes description”, and helped bring memoirs from African-American women writers from the margins of literature to the forefront. She made on average eighty public appearances a year, even as she reached her eighties, and was given numerous doctorates and awards, including reciting a poem of hers at President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, and she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2011. In addition to poetry and autobiographies, Dr. Angelou wrote plays, screenplays for TV and film, essays, cookbooks, children’s books, spoken word albums, and also did acting and directing work on stage and in film and TV.

But most importantly, she gave people a voice. Dr. Angelou gave voices to many African-Americans, women, and others who had been pushed to the margins of society. Caged Bird, probably Dr. Angelou’s most famous autobiography, has been translated into many different languages. This is not only a testament to the popularity of the book, but also to how relatable it is to people of other nations and cultures, how many different peoples can relate to Maya’s own struggles and see it in themselves, or in their people’s struggles. Some have even credited it with allowing black women writers to finally have center stage in the world of literature, instead of on the side where for far too long they’d been ignored and underappreciated.

President Obama said a few hours after the news came out of Dr. Angelou’s death that she reminded us “we all have something to offer”. Whether it be in words (written or oral), in action or just in being there for someone, we all have something to offer. Dr. Angelou offered many a voice, a way to speak about the struggles of the underappreciated and marginalized. Her words resonated with many throughout her lifetime, and I’m sure that they will continue to do so for years to come. And as the years go by, as Dr. Angelou’s works are read and dissected and discussed and debated by readers of all kinds and stripes, as movie adaptations and TV specials and new stories and poems recreate her for a new generation, and as the occasional politician or news commentator tries to appropriate her legacy for some political cause or another, I hope that one fact shines through it all, that she gave the world her voice, and allowed others to speak through it and with it.

And speaking of having something to offer, I decided on the spur of the moment to create a tribute video to Dr. Angelou. It’s not very good, and at the very most it showcases that I’m slowly getting more comfortable with video-making on computers (a valuable skill these days, it seems). But the song I put in, “Bye Bye” by Mariah Carey, is heartfelt and speaks to the emotions of many, and I think it shows my sincerity. What do you think?


You know. about five or six days ago, Dr. Angelou sent out this tweet:

I think this tweet says a lot about Dr. Angelou, because it seems that her words were definitely sent by somebody to make a difference in the world.

So to all those who were close to Dr. Angelou in life, I wish you my deepest condolences. To those who only knew her through her words, her reputation, or through her actions and influence in the world, you probably feel the same as I and many others do: like we’ve all lost someone important. And to the good Dr. Angelou herself, wherever you may be, I hope you’re doing well and that you know that your legacy will continue to influence and help us all for years to come. Thank you.

Rape Is NOT Funny

Posted: May 3, 2014 in Living and Life, Politics and Leadership, Reflections, Social Activism
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I’m going to share something that happened to me this morning with you all. I woke up much later than I’d planned to, made myself breakfast, and turned on my laptop to see my messages. In my inbox, I found that someone had replied to a comment I’d made to a YouTube video. The video in question was a Tibetan bowl singing meditation video that I listened to yesterday in order to relax after a long day. When it was over, I had commented, “Whoa, what did that just do to me?” (I was really relaxed afterwards). Between commenting on that video and checking my messages, some merry prankster had replied to my comment with this: “it raped you…with Tibetan singing bowls :)”.

Of course, you can guess how I replied: “not funny”.

And it’s true, rape is not funny, especially when you look at the realities of the problem. It’s estimated that every two minutes, an American is sexually assaulted. One in five female college students will be sexually assaulted before they graduate, usually by someone they know. Often their rapists are not punished as thoroughly as they should be by the university, receiving academic probation or being banned from campus for a year. Imagine having to be on the same campus as your rapist every day until one or both of you have graduated. It’s enough to drive you insane. And rapists who are let off easy like this are likely to repeat and rape again, averaging six assaults before graduation. It’s even likelier for rapists who include violent acts like strangulation in their assaults. Because of these statistics and several colleges apparently mishandling sexual assaults, 55 universities, my own included, are being investigated for mishandling sexual assault cases by the federal government. For some victims, they wish this investigation would’ve come sooner.

And that’s not the worst part about it. In some countries women are jailed or killed if they are raped, sometimes with the permission of the governments that are supposed to protect them. These “honor killings” or jail sentences are supposed to punish the woman for making herself sexually desirable to her rapist and causing him to commit adultery. Sometimes they are even married off to their rapists in order to preserve family honor! For many women, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other psychological disorders can arise from being sexually assaulted, so imagine having to be punished by law or married to your rapist in order to preserve some silly notion of honor.

Even in countries where women aren’t punished or married off on their rapists, sometimes things are little better. Assault victims are shamed or intimidated into keeping silent for a variety of reasons. They may believe that their assault was their fault, or that they’ll be humiliated or disbelieved if they come forward, or that coming forward will forever change how they’re viewed by people. In cases of pregnancy, some won’t be able to get abortions because laws make it difficult or impossible to do so.

Even in the United States, supposedly a progressive country where all are equal, most are seriously misinformed about sexual assault. They believe it only happens to others, that all rapists are strangers to the victim, that it’s a rare occurrence. In reality, rape is all too common, as well as pregnancies that result from rape, most rapists are someone the victims know, and it could happen to just about anyone. And when we do not blame the rapists but find ways to blame or hurt the victims or create reasons why we shouldn’t believe them, we only make things worse.

And so do the comedians who make fun of rape. Whether they make one single joke or an entire act out of rape and sexual assault, they are doing as much damage as some rapists. They tell people that rape isn’t a serious problem, that you can make fun of it and the victims who are assaulted every two minutes in America (there was a great Law & Order: SVU episode about this recently). And some people, like my commenter above, will take these comedians seriously. One or two may actually rape themselves, believing it’s no big deal.

I’m here saying that rape is a very big deal, and it is not something that should be made fun of or turned into comedy club stand-up. Rape is a serious problem people all over the world must face, and that unless we seriously try to change our culture, things will not improve. They’ll stay the same, or get worse.

So if you ever find yourself confronted with a rape joke or you think about making a rape joke, imagine that making such a joke makes someone as horrible as a rapist. And then ask yourself if you should really laugh at or make that joke, or if you should try and change things so that those jokes are never made again. You might get thanked down the road for that.

Racism Is Not Dead

Posted: May 1, 2014 in Journalism, Living and Life, Reflections, Social Activism
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Some in the American government and in the media have made the proclamation that “racism is dead”, at least here in the United States. If you ask me, the people saying this are either overly idealistic and naïve or they’re willfully ignoring facts. Because the sad fact of the matter is, racism is far from dead. It’s just not as overt as it used to be, it’s become subtler so it can thrive without being reprimanded or outcasted by the majority of Americans who don’t believe in racism or think it’s immoral.

Need proof? The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are over 200 known hate groups in the United States, with Ohio having 31, New York 42, and California 77. Other large states have many different hate groups, most having racist beliefs, and the states with fewer hate groups are more likely to have groups that can be categorized as Neo-Nazi, White Nationalist, KKK, Racist Skinhead, Black Separatist, and General Hate. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Just imagine how many small or new hate groups out there the SPLC has yet to document! The numbers are scary if you think about it.

And then there are recent episodes where racism has reared its ugly head and broadcast all over the media. Cliven Bundy recently remarked that he believes that blacks (or as he calls them, “negros”) were better off under slavery than they are now, because apparently not learning to pick cotton has lead to them being on government welfare, aborting kids, and sending their young men to jail (I could write an entire post on the meshuggas of this guy if I wanted to, but why bother? He’s obviously nuts and in the end the federal government will force him to pay the money or send him to jail, possibly with his militia friends in tow). And then he acts like the victim when reasonable people are offended by his words and says MLK Jr. didn’t finish his job.

First off, Mr. Bundy seems to forget that slavery was not a walk in the park. It was inhumane, cruel, and caused the deaths of untold millions. He also doesn’t seem to realize that there is much more to why some African Americans are on welfare, mostly because they are not afforded the economic, environmental, and social resources to help them get off welfare. Plus not all blacks are on welfare, aborting babies, or in jail. Our President identifies as black*, and he’s not on welfare (unless you count living in a government building and receiving your paycheck through taxpayer money welfare), has two beautiful daughters, and has never been to jail unless it’s been to talk to prisoners.

*Yes, he identifies as black. It’s not a biological thing, but a social construct. Amazing that we make such a big thing over a construct of our minds, but there you go. (see this post for more)

And is being on welfare necessarily a bad thing? Mr. Bundy’s ancestors were brought from Nevada on a welfare program, if I remember correctly. So don’t preach like you’re better than them, because your life is the result of welfare programs, Mr. Bundy. And by the way, don’t blame a dead man for what’s in your heart. You have only yourself to blame for your racist beliefs, and if people are offended, it’s because there is still reverberations in our own society resulting from the darkness in our past. No covering up will rid our nation of that darkness, and people are right to be offended by your remarks. At the very least, you can be considered callous, if not outright racist.

And then there’s Donald Sterling, who’s been banned from the NBA and forcibly relieved of the LA Clippers because he didn’t want his biracial mistress seen with black people. Some people say he may be senile, others say he’s worried about his performance, and others just say he’s a racist pig. I think that whatever he is, he is a hypocrite because his team is mostly black and he’s seeing a woman who is half-black, and that his hypocrisy, as we have seen, is his downfall.

It is nice to know that the same weekend we all started talking about Sterling, Family Guy had a wonderful episode that dealt with racism, not just from whites but from blacks as well. And it is nice to know that we are having a dialogue about this, that we are not trying to sweep racism under the rug or deny that it exists. That’s like trying to ignore a serious medical condition or disorder in the hopes that it goes away. Just doesn’t work out in the end.

You know, the Supreme Court is right: a lot has changed since the Civil Rights Acts were passed. We are now a more technological, global, connected society. We recycle in the hopes of not accelerating the destruction of the Earth, and the idea of a black man or a woman running for President is no longer ludicrous, but the former has become a successful reality (twice!) and the latter is welcomed by a huge majority of the country.

However racism is still a problem in this country, and it is something we will have to deal with if this country is to continue to grow and prosper. So denying racism and saying it’s dead isn’t the answer. Rather, open dialogue and a lot of love and understanding is. And we need to have more of it.

Oh, and to the KKK guy in that one news clip who says he has black friends but doesn’t believe in “racial mixing”, where are your black friends exactly? Do they know you wear a KKK robe? And could you bring me an article from an accredited medical journal published in the past ten years that says “racial mixing” is a bad thing? I would love to see it!

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