William Olsen, Period 7, 5/25

 

• Socio-political Consciousness

• What are your thoughts and feelings about issues of inequity, oppression, and/or power?

• How do you reflect critically on your own beliefs, assumptions, values, and experiences, and how these can influence your perception of self and others?

Now more than ever in the wake of the most recent tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, my thoughts are filled with my frustration with our system. The leaders that we elect continue to fail us over and over again, on both sides of the political spectrum. Most of our leaders are fueled by greed, whether that greed is for power, money, or both. They pander their campaigns to target the vulnerabilities of voters, and take orders from the corporations and lobbyists that give them insane sums of money. The vast majority of Americans support universal background checks for purchasing weapons, the most basic form of gun control, including 83 percent of gun owners, and 72 percent of all NRA members (Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics). And yet, buying a gun in states such as Texas is still as easy as ever, in some cases gun shows may not even ask for identification. This is because the NRA continues to back politicians such as Mitt Romney, who has received over 13 million dollars from the NRA over his political career. So as the cycle has repeated itself once again with media outcry, meaningless condolences from our elected officials, and no changes being made, my pessimism continues. It is very heart-wrenching to say but I have no doubt that this exact cycle will repeat again, and no meaningful change will happen once again. It seems to me like the only way change will occur is from the people, but I can’t feel anything but powerless under our current system.

So now I reflect and think to myself how can change happen? How can change happen if the people we elect to make a change and represent us only care about their own interests? And as much as I think about it, I cannot come up with an answer. I think back to the BLM protests and riots a couple of years ago. That was an unprecedented amount of public outcry and joint protest against a corrupt system, and after all that, did much change really happen? If we organized again to that level would it make a difference? At this point, it might be our only option. Besides school shootings, mass shootings in general are also extremely prevalent. The N train shooting that occurred about a month and a half ago was especially shocking because it was since I take the subway all the time and it was so close. Probably around two weeks after the shooting occurred I was going to a Yankees game, and I took the train at 36th street, which is where the shooting took place. The entire time I was on the train I was so paranoid something bad was going to happen. Reflecting on it now, it is terrible that we all have to live in fear of getting shot at any moment doing our daily routines and just simply living our lives. Something needs to change, and we all need to work together to fight for that change