Good morning, RVA. Today I’m going to focus on yesterday’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. If you’re simply too full-up, at capacity, and unable to process any more this morning, it’s OK to skip today’s email (and the news or, especially, your timeline).
Water cooler
Yesterday, an 18-year-old gunman shot and killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in the small town of Uvalde, Texas. That number of deaths has steadily increased overnight. The Texas Tribune has the evolving story with reactions from folks in Uvalde.
Outside the community forever changed by gun violence (an ever-growing collection of sister cities), people are fractured, upset, motivated, apathetic, exhausted, and every other human emotion. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy—the Sisyphus of the Senate, still trying to pass gun violence legislation since Sandy Hook—asks “what are we doing?” and promises to compromise with Senate Republicans to do even the single smallest thing to make mass shootings less likely in America.
Golden State Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr ended an emotional press conference shouting, “50 senators in Washington are going to hold us hostage...they won’t vote on [background checks] because they want to hold on to their own power. It’s pathetic. I’ve had enough.”
In Virginia, the Governor predictably offered his thoughts and prayers and little else, while State Senator Louise Lucas called for action, unfortunately, from a position with little leverage.
Locally, in a proactive but dystopian response, RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras has authorized the District’s Director of Security to “implement enhanced searches during student arrival tomorrow morning” and has asked the Richmond Police Department for additional officers at schools during arrival and dismissal.
Personally, I feel numb and apathetic, which I know is distasteful. Anne Helen Petersen gets it most right for me, which you can read in the longread below: “This is what we have chosen to allow. This is who we have become, and this is who we have been.” The future seems incredibly clear but incredibly dark: We’ll read more about Uvalde’s children and their now broken families in the coming days, we’ll hear Democrats give emotional speeches at all level of government, and then we’ll see every meaningful attempt to make our schools, communities, and children safer quietly die in the bloody hands of Republicans. This is what we have chosen to allow.
It's 54 °F, and, like yesterday, you can expect cooler temperatures in the 60s and plenty of clouds. Unlike yesterday, I don’t think we’ll see that continual, soaking rain. Keep a rain jacket handy, but you probably won’t need it for most of the day.
This morning's longread
This is What Happens When You Live Under Minority Rule
Anne Helen Petersen, writing about yesterday’s school shooting in Uvalde, captures a lot of how I’m feeling—or how I’m not feeling—this morning.
The feeling of abjection that arrives when there are no options for recourse, the simmering rage at the status quo, the desire to leave but the inability, for whatever reason, to actually do so — where does it go? In the hours immediately after the shooting, I felt it coalescing in a way I hadn’t before. There were no calls to vote, to call your representatives, to organize, to say never again. There was just acknowledgment: This is our normal. This is what we have chosen to allow. This is who we have become, and this is who we have been. Voting, on its own, will not be enough to change that. We have to decide: what will be?
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