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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Non-violence, please step forward

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In my last column I wrote about my experiences during the American Council for the Blind in Minneapolis. I left that conference mid-week, saying good bye to my brother and his wife, and headed up to St. Joseph to attend the second half of the 2016 Friends General Conference (FGC) Gathering. I looked forward to being in the midst of 1,000 Quakers with thoughtful presentations, silent worship, lively conversations at meals, keynote speakers or concerts in the evening and lots of singing, dancing and creative outpourings available throughout the days. (A note of explanation: The Society of Friends is the correct, formal name for the Quaker religion and the term “Quaker” was a slang name given because of people trembling or quaking during prayer…and it stuck.)

My normal days at home offer quite a bit of needed solitude and quiet, so I was unsure how I would hold up to nine days at these two gatherings immersed in people, activities, conversations and commotion along with the stress of orienting to each location and traveling to get there. All that input did prove to be wearing, much as I enjoyed every bit of it. I paced myself as much as possible, knowing I was in good company, for I’m sure a large majority of Quakers are introverts who value quieter surroundings and need time alone to recharge their batteries. It may be the only conference of its size that reminds people in the daily bulletins to slow down and take care of themselves. Every day there was a multi-generational activity scheduled mid-day and on Wednesday, it said simply “take a nap.” I arrived mid-afternoon, did a lot of walking trying to find my way around campus to registration and my room; exhausted, I took a quick nap before dinner, then dove into the melee.

The FGC gathering provides an opportunity for Friends to come together from around the country and the world, reconnecting, renewing friendships and working together on ongoing projects. Quakers are involved in extensive peace and justice efforts disproportionate to their small numbers.

The theme of this year’s gathering was Be humble, Be Faithful, Be Bold and among the 50 morning workshops and 20-30 daily interest groups, a number explored the issues of racism and white privilege in America. Our keynote speaker on Thursday night was to be Nekima Levy-Pounds, professor of law at the University of St. Thomas; founding Director of the Community Justice Project, a civil rights legal clinic; President of the NAACP Minneapolis Chapter; advisor to Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and a nationally recognized expert on race, public policy, economic justice, public education, juvenile justice and the criminal justice system. In 2014, she was named Attorney of the Year by Minnesota Lawyer.

Then, Wednesday night a 32-year-old black man, Philando Castile was killed by a policeman who had stopped him for a broken tail light. The day before, Alton Sterling was killed by a policeman in Baton Rouge outside a convenience store. The shock and sadness was palpable throughout the FGC Gathering and we didn’t know if Ms. Levy-Pounds would be able to come, but she came, having had only 20 minutes of sleep in the previous 24 hours, but she said there was “no better place for her to be” than in the environment FGC offered.

Then, as you no doubt know, a sniper killed five police officers in Dallas and three more in Baton Rouge, followed by the horror in Nice, France, when a man in a 20-ton truck plowed into a crowd of Bastille Day celebrants, killing 84 and wounding over 200 people. And these are just the latest in a long string of atrocities.

How are we even supposed to take this in? This inhumanity and violence sickens and saddens me. It reflects so much brokenness in our country and in our world. What choices do we have? To ignore, close our ears and eyes and hum a tuneless tune? Develop a callous layer of indifference: “Not my problem” and get on with our day? I think, at least I hope, that only the most hardened humans do not feel, “This can’t go on, something has to be done.” For some, that morphs into, “I need to do something. What can I do?”

A deeply saddened President Obama spoke to the nation: “A bullet need happen only once, but for peace to work, we need to be reminded of its existence, again and again and again…Only we can prove through words and through deeds that we will not be divided and we need to keep on doing it, again and again. That’s how this country gets united…Only we can prove we have the grace and character to end this kind of senseless violence, to reduce fear and mistrust within the American family, to set an example for our children. That’s who we are and who we have the capacity to be.” I appreciate his heartfelt words and also feel the frustration that there is so much more to be said and to be done. In January of this year, President Obama called for more thorough background checks and tougher restrictions, saying it could take a long time to break the stranglehold of the gun lobby, but we can do it. If we have the desire and the will as a nation, as a people, to create change, then there are very specific actions we can take individually and collectively. For peace to work we need to be more proactive than to simply be “reminded of its existence” and a very first step is seeking an understanding of what we mean when we say we desire “peace”? Oftentimes when people speak of peace, they mean a cessation or absence of war, violence or unrest; a passive condition defined by what is absent rather than an active, enriched way of living and being that would enhance all our lives. Imagine what our cities, our neighborhoods and our families, all the layers of our culture would be like if people understood how to live peacefully without lashing out in anger, to communicate clearly, to identify their needs, to ask directly to get those needs met, to work out disagreements with others peacefully in an atmosphere of cooperation. Conflict resolution skills and understanding peaceful communication and actions don’t just happen, but they can be learned by children and adults as building blocks for caring, cooperative interaction with each other. Efforts have been made to set up a Department of Peace with one percent of the bloated military budget, providing multiple initiatives in schools and communities for people to learn, but we haven’t had the political will to carry it through.

Those long-term goals could have a major impact but we need to have much stricter gun control and we need it now. I have no ambivalence about this: America is armed to the teeth with the bloody results apparent on the news all the time, and there is no reason why it should continue. Other countries such as England, Australia, Canada and Japan have strict gun control laws and much-reduced murder rates. In 2015, there were 50,000 incidents of gun violence in the U.S. with 12,942 people killed in a gun homicide, unintentional shooting or murder/suicide, with another 20,000 by suicide using a gun. By comparison, in England there were 42 gun-related deaths in 2008. In Japan there were eight gun-related deaths in 2008 and two in 2006, and when 22 people were killed by guns in 2007, it was a matter of national alarm.

The incidents of mass violence and terrorist incidents get the media attention, which distorts our perceptions and the focus of our resources. Think about the frenzy of attention, conjecture and millions of dollars aimed at actual or possible terrorist actions when in fact, from 2005 to 2015, 71 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and 301,797 were killed by gun violence. As the comic strip character Pogo said many years ago, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I’ve heard all the arguments against gun control and I think they’re hogwash, as apparently do 85 percent of the American public. So, what’s getting in our way?