I Feel Like I'm Losing My Mind

Today, I participated in an active shooter drill at my school. A few minutes later, we found out an actual school shooting happened in Georgia, killing two teachers, two students, and wounding more.

I don’t really have some clever thought piece here. As an educator who began their clinical hours the same year as the Sandy Hook Massacre, the unease of violence within the halls of a school building is something that I’ve at times felt numb to. As if attempting to talk about the rampant, bloody problems perpetuating specifically within the borders of the United States on children and school staff would always be indefinitely fruitless. Partisan politicians and public figures give their thoughts and prayers, give their talking points on what they believe the cause of several dead children would be, and the news cycle moves on at increasingly quicker rates. The names of the dead rarely stay in the public conscious for a few weeks (if at all), media outlets return to horse race politics, fluff pieces, and the next shiny objects. No one with power or influence seems to stop and reflect on the fact that the slaughter of children in our own communities as they eat lunch, learn academic subjects, day dream in class, plan for extra curriculars, and so on is at this point a foundational aspect of American life. I remember speaking with a more conservative aligned loved one after a school shooting occurred a few years back that I can’t even admittedly remember, and they candidly said, “At least this one doesn’t have that many bodies.” That is the Overton window that students, school staff, and parents live within pertaining to gun violence and mass shootings.

Before finding out about the horrific, senseless mass shooting completed by a fourteen year old student at Apalachee High School in Georgia where four people are dead and at least nine injured, I was apprehensive about starting the school day today as a teacher. Today was the scheduled day for us to have our active shooter drill, and for students to really think about and plan for an event that appears to loom larger and larger over each one of our heads in school communities. In the 5 years that I have been completing these drills, I have never gotten used to looking students in the eyes and explaining what we need to do if someone has entered the building to take our lives. And it was as we were finalizing this drill and bleak educational period that I saw the reporting coming out of Georgia. It truly felt surreal, and embedded the reality that once again, this is not an arbitrary measure that we take, it is a necessity in a failed society that refuses to change to ensure the security and safety of the most important aspect of our communities; the next generation.
In 2023, I put out a song about Uvalde, the issue of school shootings in the US, and the blood on the hands of law enforcement and politicians that perpetuate this violence. Since releasing that song, there have been over 900 mass shootings in the United States. And the response has been to hand more money and funds over to the people that have failed time and again to actually face the foundational problems in this country that have created this cycle.
Liberals will point to easy access of guns being the issue: and there is major validity to that, yet their own delivery on any common sense, impactful legislation showcases that they only use the issue to fundraise and to get clips for campaigns. Conservatives will point to mental health (notably they don't ever push policy to address mental health) but both partisans miss the real point; the only country in the world that regularly has this happen is definitively a sick, eroding society. Everything has been coming to a breaking point for years; the lack of access to healthcare, the fetishization and commodification of gun culture, wealth and income inequality skyrocketing, the cost of living being rampantly unaffordable, the outrage culture that everyone is steeped in within various partisan bubbles, public figures intentionally riling up their audiences and supporters with hatred and vitriol, and the lack of any real representation of the people in US electoral politics is repeatedly shown within these acts of violence than most people cannot fathom the reality and impact of. The truth is that despite the perpetrators of these crimes often having very different supposed goals, influences, or reasons for planning and committing these heinous, unfathomable acts, there is one through line. Until America changes its very structures of hatred, divisiveness, and soulless commodification in every aspect of our lives, the cycle of violence, trauma, and tragedy will repeat, and people will grow further and further numb to the next generations we have failed to keep safe.