In the 1960′s I was a teacher at a school in Prince Georges County, Maryland. One Election Day when school was out, children from the neighborhood gathered at the home of one of the youngsters and they were playing in the basement without adult supervision. One child produced a handgun and the children handed it around just as nine and 10 year-olds are likely to do. One of the boys pointed it at another boy and pulled the trigger, killing the boy. The boy who shot the gun was so terrified he ran out of the house and could not be found for hours. The boy who was killed was popular, a Boy Scout, and very bright. He was buried in his Boy Scout uniform. I will never get the image out of my mind of the boy there in the open coffin. The incident completely tore apart a once very close-knit neighborhood. Names have been forgotten but I am sure the boy who pulled the trigger had his life changed forever.
Chief Scott M. Knight
Chaska Minnesota Police Department
Chief Scott M. Knight
Republican Congressman Mike Castle from Delaware had to ask Chief Knight to repeat his statistic. “Since 1963 more Americans have died from gunfire than perished in combat in the whole of the 20th century.”
Our country’s war losses are staggering and devastating to our families, but when you hear that we lose 30,000 Americans every year to gun violence, it does make you stop and think … and ask the question again.
Chief Knight is head of the Chaska, Minnesota’s police department and chair of the Firearms Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the largest association of law enforcement executives in the world. [Read more...]
Caitlin Brady
Arizona Field Organizer
I’m not doing this because I work for the Brady Campaign . . .
I’m doing this as someone who worked to get Gabby Giffords elected… someone who knew Gabe Zimmerman, her staffer who was killed last January… and as someone who understands all too well that it could have been you or me standing in front of that Safeway in Tucson.
My heart breaks to think of all the lives that were changed forever because it was way too easy for a disturbed man to get semi-automatic with a high-capacity assault clip. [Read more...]
William Kellibrew, IV
Breaking the Cycle of Violence
“I think the more we tell our stories, the more we give others the permission to tell theirs,” says William Kellibrew, president and spokesman of the William Kellibrew Foundation. “That helps break the silence and moves people to act.”
William has been moved to speak out and act because of his tragedy. William’s mother and brother were shot in front of him when he was a young boy. The shooter turned to William, placing the gun to his head. William begged for his life and was let go. After a nearly three-hour standoff, police entered to find three bodies, including the killer’s. The shooter was a convicted felon who had spent 11 years in prison, but illegally got his hands on a gun.
The William Kellibrew Foundation is dedicated to helping victims of gun violence and domestic violence find their voices and restore their lives. The Brady Campaign and Brady Center are honored to house the Foundation in its Washington, DC office. [Read more...]
Joan Peterson
Raising Minnesota’s Voices
“When we are organized, we can do something,” says Joan Peterson, national representative to the Board of Directors of the Brady Campaign, and a leading voice for Protect Minnesota, the result of an operating merger between Citizens for a Safer Minnesota and the Minnesota Million Mom March. Joan says that email activist campaigns have made all the difference in local advocates’ ability to build momentum to help pass strong gun laws – or defeat bad ones.
Minnesota’s gun violence prevention and other advocacy groups have pooled resources to pay for Democracy in Action, a web-based tool that makes possible an e-mail network and e-alerts to Congress. Joan admits that working together through the e-mail network “has made us stronger as a group. Since we are now using one state monthly e-mail and one state newsletter, we can call attention to issues as they come up in one voice.” [Read more...]
Mindy Finklestein
Remembering the North Valley Jewish Community Center Shooting
Mindy Finkelstein was in the right place at the right time – playing capture the flag on a sunny morning with five and six year old campers at the North Valley Jewish Community Center’s summer camp. On their way to the arts and crafts, though, it all went wrong.
That’s when Mindy was shot … along with three campers … by a self-proclaimed new-Nazi, out on parole and clinically insane. He got his weapon, a semi-automatic weapon, at a gun show. [Read more...]
A Message from Gabby
STATEMENT OF DENNIS HENIGAN,
BRADY CAMPAIGN ACTING PRESIDENT, ON REP. GIFFORDS’ DECISION TO RESIGN FROM CONGRESS
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Brady Campaign Acting President Dennis Henigan today issued the following statement in response to U. S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ announcement that she would resign her seat in Congress this week.
“We understand but are deeply saddened by the news that Rep. Giffords has decided to resign her seat in Congress because of the demands of her continued rehabilitation from the gunshot wound she suffered a year ago in Tucson. Congress and the American people now have lost the service of another devoted public servant because of gun violence. It is sadly reminiscent of the nation’s loss of Jim Brady as Presidential press secretary due to a similar gunshot injury 30 years ago. We hope Rep. Giffords’ departure is only temporary and wish her well on her amazing and inspiring recovery.”
News from Chicago, IL
Blessed Are The Peace Makers -
Post Vigil Reflections by Khaleelah Muhammad, J.D.,
Neighborhood Recovery Initiative Project Manager for the Auburn Gresham Community in Chicago
Elder Bernice King Addresses Congregants at St. Sabina
On Sunday, January 8, 2012, at the Faith Community of St. Sabina, a Catholic parish on the south side of Chicago, Elder Bernice A. King, the youngest daughter of the late Coretta Scott King and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered to an interfaith audiencean empowering and impactful message of nonviolence, “Exchange your piece for His peace.” More than twelve hundred congregants and guests filled the room.
Father Michael Pfleger, the Pastor of St. Sabina, acknowledged in his introduction of Elder King, “I am a priest today because of what Dr. King and what he deposited in my life in 1966.” Father Pfleger had asked Elder Bernice King to focus her message on a call to nonviolence. But it is clear that no one anticipated the more than memorable direction that Elder King’s message took and that we all were left the better for it.
Elder King delivered her sermon from the New King’s Version Chapters Matthew 5:9, which reads, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God”; John 14:27, which reads “Peace, I leave with you. My peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid”; and Romans 8:19, which reads “For the honest expectation of the creature, eagerly awaits for the revealing of the sons of God,”
Focusing on a call of nonviolence, Elder King stressed the need to “Exchange your P-I-E-C-E for His (referring to Christ) PEACE.” Noting how we almost always want to give someone a piece of our mind, Elder King cited two of the most dangerous weapons in the world as “our tongue and weapons we call guns, knives and other things. Those are our piece, but if we are going to have true peace in the world, P-E-A-C-E,and non-violence is going to be our way, then we have to exchange, give up, trade-in, your piece for His peace,” she said referring to Jesus Christ.
Elder King highlighted the need for a paradigm shift from peace- (& piece-) keeping to peace-making. “In too many instances when we’re talking about peace, we’re talking about peace keepers. We’re talking about trying to do something to temporarily quiet things down. We’re talking… about trying to get people to just cool out for a period of time, but I don’t know about you but at some point my cooling off is going to wear out and I will be right back to where I was to give you my piece.
“It’s got to be a little bit more than just keeping the peace,” she said. “Keeping the peace many times is indicative of people who don’t want any trouble. They don’t want to get down and dirty with a situation. They want to be cute and proper, clean, cool… but if you are a peacemaker you have to go through a process of confronting some ugly things. Dr. King was a peacemaker.”
This photo demonstrates the magnitude of the altar call that Elder Bernice King made to congregants, each one rededicating themselves to the struggle to be peacemakers.
Referring to peacemaking, Elder King stated that it is difficult to make peace if one does not have an understanding that true peace really comes by being at peace with the ultimate Peacemaker. “Jesus was a transformer and he was a revolutionary transformer. He was an ultimate peacemaker…You have to first have peace with God before you can even begin to be a peacemaker. You can’t give something that you do not have; so if you don’t have peace with God who is the ultimate Peacemaker, then it’s going to be impossible for you to be a vessel for peace.”
Elder King cautioned, “Peace with God is essential if we’re going to bring peace into our streets; It takes an individual who has come to an end of themselves to be that kind of weapon, that kind of vessel.” “…The world we live in today will not change until the people of God get in line, give up your piece, your prerogative, your desire and surrender to His peace, His prerogative and His desire. Nothing else will change and transform lives.”
“It’s good to gather in our houses of worship all around this nation, but at the end of the day, I think God is grieved when we just gather in these settings and nothing takes place to move out into the streets and the highways, the byways and the crevices and in the cracks to bring about change and transformation in peoples lives.”
“Nonviolence is in the tradition of peacemaking. It means you are not afraid to go into a war zone. You’re not afraid to go in a zone of conflict and violence. You’re not afraid to confront some ugly things and some dangerous and difficult things. It means you don’t buy into the notion that I can’t snitch on nobody.
Elder King distinguished that when you can’t snitch on anyone, “you’re just a peacekeeper, but a peacemaker has to speak up, has to stand up, has to say something, can’t be quiet and is willing to lay down their life for the cause. That’s a peacemaker. That’s not a peacekeeper.”
Elder King observed that a peacemaker is a person is not afraid of controversy or of challenges. “To be a true authentic, real what you call Christian (that) I call son of God and a citizen of the Kingdom of God, then you can’t be afraid to stand up, to speak up, to risk your life to go into some dark and dirty and difficult and hard places and be willing to risk the loss of some things. Our young people deserve it. The next generation is waiting for some people of God who’re willing to pay the cost of discipleship because it’s a discipline. Nonviolence is a discipline.”
“This is a call for peacemakers. This ain’t for peacekeepers. This ain’t for wimpy…weak, scary, intimidated folks. This is for folks who are not afraid to stand up when it is not popular, who are not afraid to speak up even though people may try to shut you down. These are for people who don’t care what they say about you because you know who you are in the Lord. This is not for people who run away from conflict, controversy and persecution. Our children need us to put our lives on the line, to put our reputations on the line….”
Reflecting on her father’s statements, Elder King said, “true peace is not merely the absence of tension, it’s the presence of justice. Until there is justice, we’re not going to have peace…. People have to treated justly. Conditions have to be right. We have to deal with the wealth disparities in our nation today…Violence is only the voice of the unheard, and we’ve created a system that has locked too many people out. We’ve got to come together, band together, people of God. We’ve got to be willing to go into the center of this storm and this crisis because it’s about to pop,” she warned.
Igniting the audience, Elder King said, “When we show up in the streets of Chicago starting from this day forward, you show up as a king under the King of kings with the authority to release His peace in the land and call everybody who is out of order to come into order, but if you don’t have yourself in order for the ultimate King, then you will not be able to be effective in this way.”
She urged congregants to “stand in that authority and move in your kingship and begin to work to reclaim Chicago as the Kingdom of God. This will be a beloved community…because today some people decide to make a decision to lay down their life and to be a warrior of the kingdom.”
With a powerful message such as this, it is no wonder why congregants filed up from every direction, to answer the altar call.
Early on in her message, King acknowledged the presence of the Violence Interrupters, Senator Jacqueline Collins, the members of the Nation of Islam who were present and Ondelee Perteet who in September of 2009 at the age of 14 had plans of attending Orr Academy but instead was shot at a party leaving him paralyzed. He was there with his mother, Detreena Perteet. Father Pfleger presented them with a “Blue Heart Award.” (Click Here for VIDEO of the Award presentation)
News from Glencoe, IL
More than 100 people gathered this afternoon at Am Shalom in Glencoe, Illinois, to light candles in memory of the 20 people who were killed or injured last January 8 in Tucson, Arizona. Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein lead the program. The name of each victim was read. The impact of that horrible day was described by Susan Sholl of Glencoe as she described her realization that a friend of hers had been shot three times and had been the woman who brought Christina-Taylor Green, the young girl who was killed, to hear Congresswoman Giffords. Glencoe Public Safety Director, Chief Mike Volling spoke about violence in the North Shore area.
After a screening of the movie “The Interrupters” (members of the cast and crew are pictured left), Cobe Williams, one of the inspiring Chicago young adults featured in the movie, spoke about working with people on the edge of violence and the challenges we face as a society to reduce violence by dealing with problems such as broken homes, joblessness, and a lack of productive activities in which young people can participate.
Yoko Ono Lennon to Light a Candle on January 8
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Brady Campaign announced today that Yoko Ono Lennon has joined the Too Many Victims Campaign and has issued a simple message of peace to all standing up to light a candle on Sunday, the first anniversary of the tragic mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona:
“Dear Sisters and Brothers of the Family of Peace,
I will light a candle and think of the fact that no matter where we are, we are together in international unity.
I love you!
Yoko Ono Lennon”
Yoko Ono Lennon lost her husband, John Lennon, to gun violence on December 8, 1980. She continues to encourage each person to Imagine Peace via her projects worldwide. Her website is http://imaginepeace.com.
More information can be found throughout the Too Many Victims web site and by following us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/bradycampaign and Twitter: http://twitter.com/bradybuzz.
Penny Marshall Will Light A Candle on January 8
Actress, producer and director Penny Marshall is lending her name and support to the Too Many Victims National Candlelight Vigil and will light a candle on Sunday, January 8th to honor victims of gun violence. Please be sure to attend a vigil in your community or host your own large or small vigil to remember those who have lost their lives to senseless violence.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray Will Light A Candle on January 8
Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray will light a candle in honor of gun victims during a program Sunday at Shiloh Baptist Church. Confirmed guests also include U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, and Jim Winkler, Chair of the Brady Center’s Faiths United To Prevent Gun Violence coalition. [Read more...]
Voices of Unity Youth Choir Will Light Candles on January 8
The World Choir Games Gold Medal-winning Voices of Unity Youth Choir will honor of people lost to gun violence. The choir, which earned gold during the 2010 world choir olympics in China last year, will commemorate gun violence victims during a special Sunday, January 8 concert in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
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