An editorial

Please read to the end:

I belong to an email newsletter that helps give Americans the opportunity for short term summer teaching jobs (ESL) in China. The idea is that you are able to immerse yourself into the culture for a short 2 to 4 week period as a paid guest of the Chinese Educational system. Shane, the woman who started the program is very helpful and has done ALL of the research and arrangements that help make this possible. She just sent out a new email newsletter requesting referrals for openings to the program. I wholeheartedly endorse the program and wish I could do it. I have a friend who has done it and loved it, a highlight of his life. If you're interested, let me know.

In today's newsletter she added an Editorial, which she has never done before. I wanted to share that editorial with you as I think she has put a lot of thought and information into it and has expressed what many of us feel but do not know how to make it known. I am trying to make my feelings about this subject known by forwarding this letter to you.

Editorial:

I’ve never done this before…written an editorial in this newsletter. But the events of the past weekend have led me to make this statement.

My home is Tucson, Arizona. Gabby Giffords is my Congresswoman. I voted for her three times. She's my neighbor, too. Her condo is around the corner from where I live in an ethnically-mixed, working- class, older neighborhood in the Midtown/Garden district not far from her office. All of us residents of the Old Pueblo are traumatized by the shootings and murders this past weekend. We’re all grieving.

Today we are confronted with the unhappy news that the Pastor Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church is planning on showing up here in a few days to picket at the funeral of 9 year old Christina Taylor Green who was one of the victims. These church people are the ones you may have heard of who show up at military funerals with signs approving of soldiers’ deaths because “God Hates Fags.” The pastor has decided that the perpetrator of this weekend’s crimes was chosen by God to carry out the mayhem. Reasons why his god wanted a third-grader dead are not really clear. Literally thousands of Tucsonans are organizing now to surround the funeral site and not allow the church protesters to attend or picket the funeral. Stay tuned.

The young man who carried out these crimes showed signs of descent into mental illness for months. He was expelled from classes at our local community college and was told he couldn’t return until he had a certificate from a mental health professional saying that he was sufficiently mentally stable to attend. The word “schizophrenia” keeps coming up. I think we need to find a way to get help for those unstable souls BEFORE they commit acts of violence. If that means redirecting funds from rich people’s tax cuts into salaries for social workers and mental health professionals, then let’s do it.

We need rational gun control laws. One might keep a 22 rifle around to go hunting a couple of times a year if so inclined. But I can’t think any rational reason why the average citizen should be allowed to purchase and own a semi-automatic pistol with a 90-bullet clip attached, regardless of what the NRA thinks.

The political polarization in this country has gone too far. Unstable individuals are influenced by a political environment drenched with violent rhetoric. Is it really “free speech” to put cross hairs on a political candidate or to tell political constituents that if they can’t win at the ballot box, they always have a “Second Amendment remedy?” It’s time for us all to step up and say this isn’t okay anymore.

We’re all Americans. We may disagree, but we must not demonize those with whom we disagree.

And that goes for the Chinese, too. We and the Chinese live in the same world, and we humans have problems to solve that can only be solved if we work TOGETHER.

 Please comment and forward if you agree with Shane