I am looking forward to the day that people stop killing people. War, domestic violence, stranger violence, indifference, it all just rips tiny holes in my heart. There are so many stories of violence, too many stories, and so we can’t keep up with them all, so I don’t usually blog about individual murders. But the shooting death of Lawrence King earlier this month has fixed people’s attention, hopefully in a good way, on anti-queer violence, and maybe, if we respond thoughtfully, we can get a couple steps closer to a world without murder.
I heard about Lawrence King’s murder through Marie Fortune’s great blog, and she specifically talks about getting to the roots of the problem. King, who was just 15, was allegedly shot by a 14-year-old who he had said he had a crush on. It’s easy to just discount one or the other of these young people — in the form of blaming the victim or getting enraged at the perpetrator. But getting at the root means looking beyond individual blame to the broader circumstances in which a child is prepared to commit murder by the age of 15.
Some people will try to just blame this one boy, send him away, and go on with business as usual. Of course this young man is responsible for his actions, but his actions are not happening in isolation — the list of recent anti-queer murders is far too long. These are not isolated incidents, they are part of a pattern that shows a bigger problem than we can solve by just punishing individuals and ignoring business as usual.
How do we address the problem of anti-queer violence? Hate crime legislation, which I used to be an advocate for back in the early 90’s, is probably not the answer. It was an important social movement because what we were asking for was that acts of violence against people in specific social groups be taken seriously. Many queer people (myself included) had the experience of reporting a crime to the police and having them respond with indifference.
In that context, creating harsher penalties for these crimes seemed like a reasonable solution. We would force prosecution, we would require police to respond to these crimes. But, over time, I have come to see that threatening to lock up people for harming someone is a satisfying but ultimately ineffective strategy to prevent violence. It does not generate what we really need to prevent violence — more understanding and caring of people different from ourselves.
In order to prevent violence, we cannot turn to the threat of violence. Instead we need to create situations in which we are teaching each other understanding, promoting understanding, and making understanding each other the norm. When understanding each other is the norm, then we are not using violence on each other to solve our problems and mask our fears of each other.
Some of my favorite groups who do work with young people to teach them how to navigate difference include Kids on the Block (grade schoolers) SMYRC (teens and young adults), the Illumination Project at PCC (run by my dear friend Jeannie LaFrance). There should be programs like this for young people of every age, and of every ability, so that we normalize understanding. In a world where difference is becoming the norm, we can’t survive without skills that teach us how to meet and connect with people different from ourselves.
To those of you who knew and loved Lawrence King, I know that there are not words that can heal the horrible injury to your family, but our thoughts are with you, and please know that many of us are working in many different ways for a world in which things like this never happen again.
Two different emails landed in my in-box today about the horrible impact of war on families.
The Times brings us a heart-breaking article about U.S. military personnel who have recently killed family members. I can appreciate that there are a number of folks who are working to address domestic violence within the military, although I don’t quite get how a person can be part of a culture that teaches people to kill, and then focus their attention on making sure that soldiers and Marines only kill certain people. Here’s one part of the article that stuck with me, about a task force formed in spring of 2000 to reduce domestic violence in the military:
When the moment arrived to explain their findings and recommendations to Congress, however, the timing could not have been poorer. Deborah D. Tucker and Lt. Gen. Garry L. Parks of the Marines, the leaders of the task force, presented their final report to the House Armed Services Committee on the very day that the Iraq war began, March 20, 2003. Ms. Tucker called it “one of the more surreal experiences of my life.”
“Periodically, members of the committee would call for a break and there would be some updated information provided on the status of our troops’ entry into Iraq and how far they’d gotten,” she said. “There was a map on an easel to the side.”
“I knew that while we were at war all other considerations would push back,” she added, “and I hoped that Operation Iraqi Freedom would be a quick matter on the order of Desert Storm.”
But that “quick matter” involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. They may not have been U.S.ers, but their deaths are still just as compelling a crisis.
I think it’s a great idea to have a task force to figure out how to prevent military personnel from shooting and killing their spouses. And I think it’s completely related to the work of figuring out how to prevent military personnel from shooting and killing anyone.
Speaking of which, the other email I got was about an upcoming community event on how military violence is affecting other families:
The Human Costs of War on Children and Families
David Smith-Ferri, Activist and California Poet Laureate
Portland State University’s Center for Academic Excellence is hosting this event as part of the ongoing Civic Engagement Series. The Civic Engagement Series brings together faculty, students, staff and community partners who are interested in the role of community-based education to promote civic engagement. This series facilitates meaningful discussions related to PSU’s mission of connecting the university with the larger community.
Thursday, February 28
12 Noon – 1:30 pm
Multi-Cultural Center
228 Smith Memorial Union
Free and Open to the Public!
Through a multi-media presentation including poetry, stories, and film, David Smith- Ferri will bring into our presence the people he has met in Iraq, and the events that have shaped their lives over the past eight years. The people of Iraq are featured in Smith-Ferri’s newly released book, Battlefield without Borders. Zahra Al-Kabi, Iraqi Social Worker and Michael Taylor, Assistant Professor of Social Work and father of a veteran of the war in Iraq, will provide a panel response to Smith- Ferri’s presentation.
For more information about this event, go to the full description at PdxPeace.
Stephen Colbert has topped himself with his “Better Know a Lobbyist” interview of Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign. They cover such fertile ground as:
“Are you gay for Huckabee?”
“If gay marriage becomes legal, what’s to stop a gay man from coming into my house and gay-marrying me? Marriage is forever.”
Take five minutes, check out the video… and he says there’s more tomorrow!
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_report/index.jhtml
(I can’t provide a direct link, so look for “Better Know a Lobbyist” on Feb 06 08.
