Chasing Social Justice: How Do We Advance the Work That Matters Most? by Laurie Sherman

Author:Laurie Sherman [Sherman, Laurie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Civics & Citizenship
ISBN: 9780578676777
Google: qiF-zQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 53479871
Publisher: Maslan House
Published: 2020-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

WORD FIND

If it came from a plant, eat it;

if it was made in a plant, don’t.

~MICHAEL POLLAN, AUTHOR OF

THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA AND FOOD RULES

I can still feel the echo of Mayor Menino’s words, spoken about a year before he died. Once a month throughout his tenure, the mayor gathered all his department heads, cabinet chiefs, and policy advisors together — 80 of us. The meeting on Friday, April 26, 2013, was particularly emotional, eleven days after the Boston Marathon bombing. Our police commissioner was still out in the field. The room was filled with many other committed and tireless professionals: the head of transportation who had a role in setting up the roadblock to make sure the suspects couldn’t escape; the head of public health who had arranged mental health counseling for survivors and their families, then brought them from the hospital to the bombing site for a private service before Copley Square was re-opened to the public; many people who had worked day and night for over a week, staffing the mayor’s hotline to help people find their family members who had been at the marathon. Everyone was shaken; all were exhausted.

Mayor Menino rolled into the room in his wheelchair, having checked himself out of the hospital early, once the bombing occurred. We all rose to our feet, applauding, many with tears forming. The mayor spoke about meeting with the families of the eight-year-old boy and two adults killed. He had visited some of those maimed by the two bombs set off near the finish line of the marathon. There was an audible catch in his voice at one particular moment. I’d worked with Tom Menino for 17 years, and this was the only time I’d seen him cry. He started to refer to the people in the hospitals, many of whom had lost limbs, as the “victims” he visited. Then he paused, and said softly, almost as if reflecting to himself, “They aren’t victims; they are survivors.”

We all know that words affect us, but too often we don’t use them to our advantage — thoughtfully, intentionally. Gun violence is one issue which illustrates this.

After the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, many noted a somber reality: Following one failed attempt at a shoe bomb, security policy changed so that we all take off our shoes at the airport. Yet after dozens of school shootings since Columbine, there was no significant change in the regulation of guns. With names like “Shooting Star,” “Desert Eagle,” and even “Peacemaker,” these handheld weapons of mass destruction somehow reside inside a powerful force field, deflecting our arrows. To crack the shield, we must choose — and use — our words.

In a country that embraces a lore of rugged individualism, many will reject “control.” So I’ve seen activists and commentators shift to “gun safety” or “common sense gun measures.” At a minimum, we should refer to it as “gun responsibility;” this tenet reflects a value shared by conservatives and liberals: with freedom comes responsibility.

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