Gun Violence Is as American as Apple Pie

But gun ownership only became popular after World War II, when conservatives united to prevent desegregation

_____ America today is caught in a plague of gun violence. It wasn’t always this way. Americans used to own guns without engaging in daily massacres. Indeed, it always jumps out at me that the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, when members of one Chicago gang set up and killed ...
Read More
Gun Violence Is as American as Apple Pie

Dear NRA, We Are Here to Stay

A reflection on gun violence, teenage political passion, and possibility

I struggled very much with writing a piece about National Walkout Day. I have so many thoughts and opinions swirling in my head about this action and the subsequent events that I am almost afraid to put them down on paper, for fear I will leave something out. I also ...
Read More
Dear NRA, We Are Here to Stay

America’s Hunger Games

The normalization of mass shootings will only stop when a majority of citizens start acting

In the dystopian novels of Suzanne Collins, the Capitol organizes annual Hunger Games, in which twenty-four youth – one boy and one girl from each peripheral district, which resemble colonies – are forced to fight to the death. The children, who are selected by lottery and mostly poor, are trained, ...
Read More
America’s Hunger Games

Black Insurgency, Anti-Racism, and the Student Mobilization Against Guns

The similarities and differences of these social movements

I have seen many comments on social media about the significant difference in how the emergence of the student mobilizations against gun violence has been greeted compared to the Black insurgency of Black Lives Matter. It is an important discussion to have because if these current mobilizations hope to grow into ...
Read More
Black Insurgency, Anti-Racism, and the Student Mobilization Against Guns