CEASEFIRE is about gun violence, and legacies of violence against people of color.
I am doing my part to keep alive the memory of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, the parishioners of Emanuel AME, the clubgoers of Pulse, and so many more souls whose names flicker in shadow.
And like many other activists, artists, writers and thinkers, I'm attempting to link our national epidemic of violence with an intersectional tapestry of physical, cultural, economic and spiritual oppression of people of color — some reaching back decades, centuries, millennia and beyond.
And then, of course, there are the guns — which don't just affect people of color: all American bodies are exposed to this epidemic. Gun violence does not discriminate, but it does hit communities of color the hardest, making all of the above issues inordinately harder to resolve.
In my opinion, our nation is awash in guns. It is a public health crisis. It's not just the media-saturated mass shootings — it's the accidental deaths of children in bedrooms, the gun suicides, the street homicides, and so on.
Other countries with cultures similar to ours — notably, Australia and the UK — have taken decisive steps towards healing these crises. We can too.
Yes, we have a 2nd Amendment. But there is so, so much we can do, on so many levels, to turn the tide of this epidemic of violence.
I'll be writing more about these intersectional issues in future posts.