We Came Home to a List of Cities
On gun violence and taking vacation while everything is burning.
We came home to a list of cities.
Buffalo, NY, Orange County, CA, Dallas, TX, Chicago, IL, Winston-Salem, NC, and Houston, TX.
The news alerts come in slowly when you’re abroad. I travel with my phone on airplane mode to avoid the international data charges. I move Twitter off my home screen, I try to stay away from Instagram except in the mornings when I need to keep my eyes open. I whisper to myself as I count breaths across the cobblestones - “stay here, stay here, stay here.”
It’s not like the world can disappear entirely, but the lens shifts, focusing in on Ukrainian flags snapping in the wind, trans flags in the Eurovision audience, a note on our Covid entry form for Estonia that the border with Russia is closed. Outside the Russian embassy in Tallinn, Estonia, all along the barricades are flowers and candles and signs calling on Russian mothers to bring their sons home. My mom texts me to ask if I’ve seen the news, but this time she means NATO.
On vacation the sun is bright, and the news alerts are easy to miss. We drank wine in the afternoon, stayed up too late as the sun slipped slowly over the horizon near to midnight. We wandered strange and scrubby landscapes, among pastel colored buildings and along the riverfront. We numbed our feet in the Baltic and ate rapturously. This is vacation while everything is burning.
Then you come home to a list of cities.
On Tuesday we added yet another one, and another place stained by grief and fear. Subway, movie theater, music festival, night club, church, synagogue, grocery store, high school, elementary school.
Another elementary school.
We don’t have to live like this. Even now, when it seems desperate and hopeless, when it seems like no matter what we do and no matter how hard we try, the knowledge is there. The sharp and blinding pain of anger and solace - we can fix this, but we haven’t. We don’t have to live like this, but we do. The fight goes on. The fight goes on and on and on and on and on.
Here are some steps you can take:
Donate to Everytown for Gun Safety or Moms Demand Action.
Take action with Everytown for Gun Safety:
Tell your Senators to confirm the ATF director - the agency hasn’t had one since 2015.
Donate to help register voters in Texas. Governor Abbot signed more than 20 pieces of legislation to make it EASIER to buy a gun in 2021. You can find more info on this timeline of mass shootings in Texas as compared to legislation.
Call your Senators and tell them to abolish the fucking filibuster and pass some gun safety legislation.
Dial 202-224-3121. This is the switchboard for the Capitol. You’ll either get an automated menu or a person. If you get a person, say “Senator [NAME]’s office please” and they’ll connect you. You can also find their direct lines here.
Say this: “Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent from [ZIP CODE]. I am calling to demand that the Senate abolish the filibuster and pass gun safety legislation. Thank you and have a good day.”
Do this even if you’ve called before, even if you are represented by Republicans, even if you know your Senator is on top of it. Senators use these calls to pressure their colleagues, to prioritize how they spend their time, and they need to know this is important to you. And they need to know this will continue to be important to you even after the midterms.Elect fighters.
Support mutual aid programs and violence prevention programs in your city and state. Support food banks, volunteer in schools, fight for abortion rights, education equity, and climate justice. The bad news is that all of this is connected. The good news is that it’s all connected - so wherever you help, you help.