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Saturday In The Park : March For Our Lives

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March 24, 2018.    Beverly, Massachusetts

Viterbo’s Homemade Sign

The issue of gun violence is particularly perplexing to school kids. It is a strange time we live in when kids have to rehearse "Lockdowns" and have "Active shooter drills" to be prepared for what we pray never happens in our community, but which has already happened in too many American communities.

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Times Have Changed.

The Second Ammendment was written at a time when states were expected to raise their own militia for protection from pirates and foreign interests. Today we have a Coast Guard and State National Guard units to do that.  The ammendment was also written at a time when people of color were enslaved and considered under the constitution to be only 60% human. Times have changed. It's about time that laws concerning gun use change with them.

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Protect Kids…

Everytime a bunch of kids get killed in a school, the powers that be insist is not the right time to discuss why this problem is unique to our country. They offer "thoughts and prayers" for the lost children and teachers. I'd like to get to the root causes, ban bump stocks, make it harder to get an assault rifle than a package of Sudafed and offer "Thoughts and prayers" for lost gun rights.

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“NRA, Go Away!”

Well said, kid. The NRA owns Donald Trump and half of the U.S. Congress They pour and insane amount of money into congressional campaigns to poison the debate and spread paranoid propaganda. For eight years I heard NRA supporters claim that "Obama is coming for your guns!" I was hoping after awhile that they were right, but sadly on January 20th of last year Obama left to water sju with Richard Branson and all the walking grafftti right wing psychopaths still had their guns.

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Taking A Stand

Enough!  In July 2015 My wife Kathy, our son Viterbo, daughter Violeta and I attended the wedding of our dear friend Alaina. Alaina was a therapist who worked with Viterbo when he was in an Early Childhood Intervention Program. Viterbo lost his ability to speak after receiving a flu shot when he was 14 months old. Alaina helped him relearn his words and develop the skills to attend school in an integrated classroom. She became close friends with Kathy and our family and has remained friends for years. Alaina lost her best college friend, Victoria Soto, during the Sandy Hook School shooting in December 2013. They were supposed to be in each other's weddings, but that didn't get to happen. After the Sandy Hook shootings Victoria's family was harassed by rightwing extremists who insisted Victoria never existed and accused them of being paid "crisis actors" The NRA has spent a lot of money to present an alternate reality for its supporters. Imagine going through the grief of losing a loved one and then being accused of making it up, being told your daughter, sister, or best friend didn't exist. That's pretty cruel. Since Saturday NRA apologists have been shamelessly attacking the school kids who organized the nationwide March For Our Lives, as if these kids haven't been through enough.

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Democracynow!EverytownMarchForOurLives

Written by PaulPallazola

10 Comments

  2. Well the only thing we can do is fight like hell or sit back and watch the country drift towards fascism. I was in Guatemala in 1988 and I saw enough of military checkpoints and people afraid to say what they think to know that’s no way to live. Not gonna let it happen here.

  3. For someone not living in the US and watching this things passing on the news is… incomprehensible. Is very, very clear that the gun loby is guilty, in paert, for this things to happen. See the statistics in other countries without free gun ownership and every argument of this loby will fall.

    • For someone not living in the US and watching this things passing on the news is… incomprehensible. Is very, very clear that the gun loby is guilty, in paert, for this things to happen. See the statistics in other countries without free gun ownership and every argument of this loby will fall.

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        • I have faith that the majority of American voters are decent, intelligent people, I don’t have faith in the integrity of U.S. elections. For two decades the Republican party has systematically worked to disenfranchise voters who it sees as likely to vote against their candidates, making it harder for black and Latinos to vote. Since 2004 several southern states have used electronic voting machines manufactured by a company that has contributed heavily to the Republican party. One of those states is North Carolina. There was no way to cross check the validity of electronic votes cast there. I find it curious that in the 2004 Presidential election Republicans carried North Carolina despite the enormous popularity at the time of Senator John Edwards, the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate. We are seeing the emergence of a cosmetic democracy where elections don’t represent the popular will.

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          • I wish I had your faith, but it seems like reactionary single issue voters are dragging this nation to hell. Election hijacking doesn’t help matters at all…

      • It is one of the logic defying aspects of this debate that every other major industrialized country has taken a different path than ours, a path that has clearly resulted in a lot more children growing up and a sense of security when people go to schools, discoteques, and other public places that a crazy man with an automatic weapon won’t target them. The fact that one industry can hold an entire nation hostage to its will is bizarre.

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