Enough

A PRESCHOOLED Mixtape Giving and Water Aid on BonBonBreak

Enough

In July, shortly after the Lafayette, Louisiana movie theater shooting, I visited my octogenarian cinephile mom in Upstate New York. For as long as I can remember, she has seen at least one movie every week, often going by herself if no one else is around to come with her.

“I know just what I’ll do if someone pulls out a gun at a theater,” Mom said as we sat at lunch in her bright little kitchen, and went on to explain how she’d hunker down under a seat and try to crawl toward an exit.

I hope the image of a grandmother of eight pre-planning her army crawl to safety in a movie theater in America in 2015 is as depressing to you as it was, and remains, to me. I went on Twitter later that day with a full tank of sarcasm and wrote, “My movie loving mom just explained her strategy for evading gunfire in a theater to me. Well done, America 2015. #GunControlNow.” A couple people who follow me on Twitter liked the tweet, a couple others retweeted it.

Later that evening, I saw that someone I’d never heard of had retweeted it and said something like, “Sounds like the mother has more sense than her #SJW daughter. Good for her. ”

My first reaction was confusion = #SJW? I Googled it. It stands for “Social Justice Warrior.”

For a moment, I was filled with pride. A warrior for social justice? Sounds like a compliment to me.

Then I clicked through the definition on Urban Dictionary and read this: “Pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, for the purpose of raising their own personal reputation. They do not have relevant favorite real-world places, because SJWs are primarily civil rights activists only online.”

And then it finally dawned on me. That guy considers Social Justice Warrior a derogatory term. One click through to see his other tweets confirmed it. This was probably not a person who would envy my “Christmas 2008 – Thanks Santa!” ornament with the picture of Obama on it. This guy really believed it was a swell idea that my mom should have to have an escape plan when she goes to see the next installment in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel franchise: What The Bellhop Saw. SJW is a character-saving synonym for “lefty liberal bleeding heart,” handy in the era of 140 characters.

And then I got scared. Because you can’t shake a stick without hitting an outspoken, online friend of mine who has been harassed by trolls for his or her public support of causes I, too, believe in: Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood, compassion for refugees, and yes, sane gun control. Was this guy putting me on the map for his other friends, to make it easier for them to come after me?

I left the tweet up there, but I backed off the topic online. I could just stick to music and humor and the occasional ballerina picture. I could be a #SJW, but a low-key one. You know, keepin’ it on the down low. Don’t tell everybody you know.

So in one way, the guy was absolutely right about me limiting my activism to the online realm. And even then, with trepidation.

Only that doesn’t work. As the shooting in Colorado Springs in November, or the one last week in San Bernadino, or any of the other 353 mass shootings thus far in the US in 2015, proves all too painfully.

There was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle this week that I found infuriating. The title said it all: “Despite shootings, Congress unlikely to alter gun laws.” This is the sentence that got me, talking about the fact that Republican opposition to gun control is driven by a small core of gun-owning voters: “Although they may number only 5 percent of the electorate, they are single-issue voters whose high motivation to knock on doors and turn out in primaries is enough to topple lawmakers.”

Five percent of voters is what’s making it impossible to ban people on the no-fly list from buying guns, to close loopholes in background checks, to put limits on the sale of assault weapons. Five percent of voters is what is propping up the market for Bullet Proof backpacks for our kids.

You guys, five percent ain’t no thing. As long as the other 95% of us with high motivation to knock on doors and turn out in primaries get out there to show politicians that we’re not going to stand for their NRA-funded lack of a spine.

So this weekend, this lefty liberal bleeding heart voter is getting out there to demand change, out loud and in public, and I hope you’ll join me to make yourself heard. Moms Demand Action stands for a future without gun violence in America, and this weekend the California chapter is organizing family-friendly Orange Walks up and down the state, “to commemorate the Newtown anniversary and the founding of Moms Demand Action, to provide an event for new people to better understand where our movement has come since Sandy Hook, and to hold our politicians accountable.” Wear orange, bring your family, bring your friends. Be counted.

I’ll be at the Marin walk on Sunday, December 13th at 9:30 am in Piper Park. Facebook RSVP here.

There’s also an East Bay Orange Walk on Saturday, December 12th in Walnut Creek, meeting at the fountain at Broadway Plaza at 10:30 am. Facebook RSVP here.

If you’re elsewhere in the Golden State, check out this link for additional events.

And if you’re not in Cali, MDA has chapters all over the country. Get involved. Speak up.

Here’s to a future where my mother’s biggest worry at the movie theater is whether people sitting in front of her are going to slurp soda and crinkle candy wrappers.

Three years after Newtown: is that too much too hope?