Our hearts are heavy today as we process yesterday’s devastating massacre of yet another 10 Coloradans at the hands of a gunman. These were our neighbors, our friends, our family. No one deserves to have their lives cut short, in terror, with the finality of a deranged man’s bullets.
And yet, so many Americans have.
It was just last week that we were devastated to learn of the massacre of eight Georgians.
And the Americans who died from gun violence the week before, and the week before that.
As our state and our nation continue to mourn once again, we are worn down by decades of this devastation, and our seeming inability to stop this terror against our neighbors, our family, our friends, our children, and ourselves.
Just as no one deserves to die this way, no one deserves to live this way either. Journalist Norman Cousins said, “The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” What we’ve allowed to die inside us is our hope in humanity, our faith in a better future for ourselves, our children; our freedom to go about our days without the fear of being murdered while buying ingredients to feed and nourish our families.
Now, standing in place of our hope, is an all-consuming terror. This terror has cast a dulling, omnipresent pallor on all that we do and choose not to do: whether we’ll see our favorite musician at a massive amphitheatre, whether we’ll send our children to one school or the other, whether we’ll glance at the exits the next time we go to buy milk, or decide it’s safer to stay home.
It’s not for a lack of language and insight and analysis and research that we still live like this. It’s from a lack of courage, and a lack of creativity to imagine a world different from this, void of this underlying panic and fear that haunts our nightmares and tucks our children into school closets.
We must demand better.
We are done waiting.
And in Colorado, there is no reason to wait. The difference between our state and the next is we have the power to make the very changes that have been proven to save lives.
The only thing we don’t know, the questions that stand between us and a terror-free future, are whether or not Coloradans will hold our leaders accountable, and if our leaders have the courage to stand with our convictions.
It’s only our lives that hang in the balance.
Take Action:
Call your Colorado legislators.
Find your representatives information here, and call and email them.
The Colorado General Assembly must act, now, to repeal the state pre-emption law, which prohibits communities from making their own residents safer by enacting their own gun restrictions. Further, local law enforcement must do more to ensure the Colorado ban on high-capacity magazines is being enforced.
Call your Colorado Senators.
Sen. Michael Bennet 202-224-5852
Sen. John Hickenlooper 202-224-5941
Ask them to enact federal gun sense legislation. The U.S. Congress must pass laws to make us safer, including a law to require universal background checks. If Republicans in Congress are unwilling to support a modest and overwhelmingly supported law such as universal background checks, then it is clear that eliminating the filibuster is justified.
If you are currently in crisis, please call 1-844-493-8255, text TALK to 38255, or go directly to Mental Health Partners walk-in center at 3180 Airport Road, Boulder.
Vigil In Remembrance of the Victims
– Vigil for the 10 Victims: Thursday (3/25) at 6:30PM, Fairview High School, 1515 Greenbriar Blvd., Boulder. (Organized by the Colorado chapter of Moms Demand Action. Participants are asked to use the parking lot as a drive-in due to covid precautions.)
Additional Resources:
– Free Support services for community members: Today (3/23) 8AM – 5PM, University of Colorado Boulder Events Center, 950 Regent Drive
– Virtual Support Group: Today (3/23) 4PM, Will include multiple therapists, who will host breakout groups based on needs. Groups will be available for those directly impacted, for first responders and for those indirectly impacted. To join via Zoom, go here
– Colorado Crisis Services: https://coloradocrisisservices.org/
Education + Activists Groups
– Colorado Ceasefire: https://www.coloradoceasefire.org/
– Community Justice Action Fund: https://www.cjactionfund.org/
– Mom’s Demand Action: https://momsdemandaction.org/act/
– Everytown for Gun Safety: https://everytown.org/
– March For our Lives: https://marchforourlives.com/
– Giffords Gun Control: https://giffords.org/take-action/
* Thank you to the Boulder Daily Camera for the local resources information.
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Thanks for pulling these resources together and urging another round of "contact your Congress delegation."
If you want to add to it, there are bound to be spots for donations to families surviving the victims and perhaps for the community as a whole. Denver7, the ABC affiliate, has a beginning list here.