 Thanks for coming tonight to this important reading from Bullets into Bells. Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. It's presented by Bear Pond Books with Gunsense Fermat. It's hard to say I am thrilled to present this program tonight because as much as I love this book, I wish it didn't have to exist. As much as the poems and testimonies in this book move me, I wish there wasn't such a great and unfortunately growing need for these narratives. Narratives that bridge violence, hope, healing, and strength. Narratives that push you to the brink of tears, or if you're like me, over the brink. And then push you to want to do better. We have to do better to prevent the kinds of violent tragedies that pushed this book into existence. With that, I urge you all to vote by Tuesday, November 6th. Use your empowered voice and vote for a better world, for all of us, for our kids, for our communities, for our neighbors, and for ourselves. If you are moved by what you hear tonight, I urge you to buy a copy of the book. They make great gifts to teachers, poetry lovers, or friends in high places like the State House. Books will be on sale right at the front of the stage here after the reading. Bear pond books will donate proceeds of tonight's book sales to Gunsense Vermont. And please also visit the little table with the basket and feel free to donate for them tonight as well. We had to hire security tonight. We received word that an oppositional force was going to protest our reading. Thankfully, that did not happen, but it did detract funds from our donations from tonight. Ticket sales were going to help a donation to Gunsense, so our priority is of course a safe and peaceful event, and so I'm asking you to make it your priority to help organizations tonight, organizations like Gunsense Vermont. I want to thank our poets and speakers for coming tonight. Some as far away as Newtown, Connecticut. Thank you. Brian Clements. Unfortunately, we learned last minute that Abby Clements was unable to make it, so her parts in the program will be read by other presenters tonight. Another thank you to our cosponsor Gunsense Vermont and to the Vermont Arts Council who designated bullets into bells of Vermont Arts 2018 reading. I'd also like to thank our media sponsors WGDR, Goddard College Community Radio. They're here tonight recording for the VonMott Poetry Show and Orca Media, filming for Public Access Television. Please feel free to sign up for the Bear Pond Books newsletter that's at the front table. We will send out a link for the video of tonight's reading. And I thank you all again for coming. This is going to be a truly touching evening of powerful poems. Please refer to your program for the order of events and to learn more about our amazing poets and speakers. To start off tonight with opening remarks, please help me welcome the Executive Director of Gunsense Vermont, Clay Lasher Summers. Thank you for coming. I'm really happy to be here. I just wanted to say that for all of us we should just take a moment settle into our space. It's been a tough week. It's been a tough couple of weeks. And I wanted to thank you for all of you who helped us this past session at the State House. Enact three bills that I think will make a big difference in the state of Vermont. I think that's all I'm really going to say about that. But I wanted to say that the language of gun violence as we know it is often fraught with rhetorical speech. It's either yes or no. People use the speech to raise money, not to raise money. And that to me I think has always been one of the upsetting things about this. We need to do away with language that is so divisive. And I think and I know that what bullets into bells has done has brought us to a place where the poets are taking over and where the poets are saying there's another way to look at this. So that is all I would really like to say. But my friend Brian is here and the way that Brian and I know each other we knew each other before the book. I'm a gun violence survivor and Brian and Abby are gun violence survivors. And there's a family that weaves us together. So if I only see Brian once a year we are together and we are settled in our space and I'm delighted that he and the other poets are here. So with that Brian will come speak. Good evening everyone. Thank you for being here. Thanks also to Samantha for all the work that you put into making this event happen. We really appreciate all your work and thanks to for bear to bear upon books. I'm very happy to hear that proceeds from this event will go to Clay's organization. Might also point out that the money that the bookstore gave to Beacon Press to get those books actually will go to the Peace Center of Connecticut. All of our proceeds from book sales for this year are going to the Peace Center of Connecticut which is an organization in Hartford that works on the ground to opportunities for gun violence to happen in the bud and to work with gangs and gang members and young people who are on the streets a lot to help prevent gun violence among them. So thank you all for that. I especially want to also thank Clay and Matthew and Major not only for being here tonight but also for being a part of the Bullets into Bells project. Thank you so much for being a part of it. The work that you all do is really the heart of this project and it's an honor to share these pages and the stage with you. I also send greetings and regrets from my wife Abbey who intended to be here tonight. Since the Sandy Hook shootings in addition to holding together a classroom helping to hold together a school a school district a community and a family. Abbey has worked what is essentially the equivalent of two and a half full-time jobs. She continues to teach in Newtown but she also devotes a lot of her time working with her union the American Federation of Teachers working nationally to educate and organize teachers on gun violence issues and to fight to keep guns out of schools and to resist arming teachers. Recently she co-organized a conference that brought 100 high school students to Washington DC a couple of weekends ago to help those students learn how to advocate for themselves on gun violence issues in schools and in their neighborhoods. Abbey's also co-lead of the Connecticut chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gunsense in America she's helped start 14 new groups in the state in the last year since Parkland actually. So she's been quite busy and last weekend the the shootings in Pittsburgh hit her heart as they do these shootings do all of us these mass shootings hit all of us hard but survivors of mass shootings are especially hard hit by these incidents so she's recuperating from that and i'm going to go home tonight and try to convince her not to go to a 5k walk tomorrow. We find ourselves here in a deep breath a deep anxious breath before Tuesday's election I trust that many of you have already voted since you have early voting here we do not have that in Connecticut unfortunately we have to vote on Tuesday which is a shame and i'm sure for a lot of you or most of you and a lot of other people gun violence is an important issue on the mind while voting regardless of where you stand on these issues pro-second amendment or anti-second amendment pro legislation to prevent gun violence or anti-moral legislation what i'm not convinced about though is that gun violence issues actually swing any votes my guess is that um pre-existing political affiliation is probably a pretty good predictor of how you stand on issues related to gun violence and guns a third of the country is always going to vote democratic a third of the country is always going to vote republican there's a third in the middle there i suspect half of those usually vote one way and half of those usually vote the other way i know that there are some people who are in that middle for whom guns and gun violence is a number one issue but there aren't that many people not enough to swing elections we can't rely on elections to fix this for us we know that elections are important they're not the only solution to this we really have a two-front problem here there's the electoral political problem and maybe in this election in the next election we will elect a congress that is committed to doing something about gun violence legislation and maybe in the next presidential election we'll get a president who's willing to cooperate with them on that but it's just as likely that in the next election or the election after that we'll lose that we can't rely upon that the major front on this issue is a long term cultural change we have to be responsible for making that change happen among ourselves with each other with our families in our communities at our places of worship at the places we work by having tough conversations with the people in our lives the function of and the intent and the purpose of this project bullets into bells has never been to change anyone's vote it has always been to build empathy in audiences and in communities we've been doing events like this one all over the country we hope to eventually do at least one in every state of the union but we're having these conversations and hearing people talk about their experiences with gun violence and their commitment to ending gun violence that's a long-term project to change the way we think about guns in this country and think about gun violence and the roles of guns in our everyday lives and the other issues that guns feed into guns aren't our only problem in gun violence of course we have a mental health issue in this country we have a domestic violence issue in this country we have a teen impulse suicide issue in this country we have a veteran suicide issue in this country we have a gang violence issue in this country we have a road rage issue in this country we have a white supremacy issue in this country and guns make all those problems worse all of them so we have to change the way we think about all those issues and the way we think about guns in order to achieve real cultural change in this country and my hope is that this project helps to do that in some small way now it's also possible that there are a lot of people in this country like my brother-in-law who agrees with me that we need to improve our background check system in this country he agrees with me that there's no reason for civilian stone 100 round magazines there's no reason for civilian stone bump stocks he agrees with me that in households where there's been domestic violence or someone is under severe mental or emotional distress someone else in that household should be able to ask to have the guns removed from that household but he's not willing to support any legislation on any of those issues because he's afraid that it will lead to a slippery slope that will not allow him to own the 17 guns that he currently owns or more maybe that's where we are as a country maybe the current political atmosphere in this country is a real reflection of the heart and soul of our country right now but i choose not to believe that and i know the other people in this book choose not to believe that and i hope you choose not to believe that and that you will leave here tonight and do something on some issue related to gun violence that will help participate in the conversation about stopping deaths from guns um i referred to this as a project rather than as a book because really the book is only one of three parts of this project that is bulletin to bells the second part as i mentioned is events like this which we're doing all across the country i think we've done about 30 of them so far in churches and libraries and on college campuses and community centers and private homes will continue to do those and engage in these conversations and i hope that in the q and a section at the end of this event that some of you will feel free and comfortable enough to ask questions or even to tell us a story about your experience with gun violence and and share your experience i know that can be difficult to do the third part of the project is a website bullets into bells dot com where we continue to publish additional poems about gun violence essays interviews videos all kinds of content will continue to do that into the future and we invite everyone here to visit the website there are also opportunities for action there from time to time not only to read the content that is there but also possibly to submit some stuff if you have poems or essays or op-eds or something like that a video that you would be interested in sending to us we'd be happy to have you do that um like many of you i'm sure i grew up around guns i grew up in arkansas and mississippi mostly arkansas um enjoyed shooting guns when i was a kid it was actually pretty good at ski shooting um but i also like many of you on a day-to-day basis heard about gun violence when i was growing up on tv shootings in little rock armed robberies wounded shooting and killed shooting at a classmate in high school who committed suicide with a gun i had people in my extended family who'd been on both ends of gun violence giving it and receiving it but i did what most people do in this country i ignored it i said that's awful i'm so glad it wasn't us until of course the day it was us and i'm ashamed to say that it was sandy hook that it took sandy hook to wake me up to get me active on this issue the poem that i'm going to read tonight from the book is my poem called 22 um this is the first poem that i wrote after sandy hook it took me about a year and a half to get it out and it deals with a lot of the issues that i've been talking to you about already 22 a guy my girlfriend ran off with in 1983 drove a rusted out beetle and carried a 22 pistol for runs to the bank to drop off nightly deposits at the general cinema where he was assistant manager and where i worked and saw rocky horror about 20 times more than i wanted to in egg and tp drenched midnight shows he lived in a rat trap roach infested leaning over shack on the edge of the heights a few streets over from the house where in 2004 a local tv reporter was murdered in her bed her face beaten beyond recognition in 1988 on my first night as assistant manager at a restaurant in dallas a fight broke out between a pimp and a private investigator who also may have been a pimp a group of frat boys decided to jump in and knocked the whole scrum over onto the floor just on the other side of the bar for me the pimp came up pointing a 22 semi-automatic directly at the closest object which happened to be my forehead he didn't shoot just waved his gun around until everyone cowered under their tables and calmly walked out the front door and down the street my best friend in sixth or seventh grade moved to arkansas from new mexico ron's skin was lizard rough he raised hamsters and hermit crabs i struck him out for the last out of the little league championship and we went out to his father's farm and shot cans and bottles with his 22 rifle back in new mexico he'd had some health problems and his mother had shot herself in the head a few years ago a dead body was found buried on his father's property ron's son ended up shooting himself in the head as well he was 22 on december 14th 2012 an armed intruder entered the sandy hook school with two pistols a bush master 223 hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a shotgun in the car rather than turn right toward my wife's classroom where she pulled two kids into her room from the hallway he turned to the left murdered 20 children and six adults including the principal and the school psychologist both of whom went into the hallway to stop the gunman and shot two other teachers who survived after that a lot of other things happened but it doesn't really matter what so this book has a call-and-response structure matt and i were talking about it before before the reading it's kind of a unique anthology one of the unique things about it is that each poem is paired with a response from a gun violence survivor or an activist or a community leader or a national leader like senator chris murphy or an international leader like nobel piece larry at jody williams so the book turns into a kind of a conversation between poems and respondents the response to my poem was written by po kim murray who is the one of the founders of an organization called newtown action alliance which was one of the several organizations that popped up in newtown after the shootings at sandy hook po says it did not matter to the national rifle association the republican members of congress donald trump republican governors republican state legislators and some democrat democratic legislators that my neighbor killed his mother in her bed then drove to sandy hook elementary school to brutally gun down 20 children and six educators with an ar 15 with high capacity magazines or that 100 000 americans are killed or injured by guns in our towns and cities across the nation every single year or that there are nearly 300 mass shooting incidents annually it mattered to us we are a group of newtown connecticut neighbors and friends who form the newtown action alliance a grassroots group advocating for cultural and legislative changes to end gun violence in our nation it mattered to 90 percent of americans who support expanded background checks it mattered to families of victims and survivors directly impacted by gun violence because it still matters to us we will work to hold all state and federal elected representatives accountable for standing with the nra instead of taking action to keep all of us safe safe from gun violence despite the nra rhetoric we know firsthand that guns kill and guns don't make us safer i'm deeply gratified by your presence here tonight and i want to thank brian and clay for their activism and their work and i'm very proud to be a part of this book i think it's not only timely regretfully but also in a substantive way gives voice to what i feel is something that might be easily to rationalize away gun violence is is traumatizing whether you are in the city of which it occurs it seems like my life has been defined by gun violence from a short kid from where i grew up but i've worked very much to kind of keep mindful of the fact that this is not normal and to deal with particularly the fact and it's a difficult fact is that so much of our history involves this nature of of violence the plundering of bodies is a fact of our coming to age as as a country and particularly black bodies and so the shooting of unarmed people i want to say black people but it happens all over this country but it's something that we should always be mindful of that they are unarmed and there are other ways by which to enact the law this poem and read is called Ferguson and of course it deals with michael brown one of the one of the aspects of of michael brown's life of course and justifications that he was a criminal and chiefly because of his black body we know that and scholars have talked about this that much like laws like stand your ground these are laws that are flawed by the fact that the black body has been constructed as a body to fear and so that when police pull their gun to shoot they're already acting from a space of of fear part of that equation also means dehumanizing the body so that render them not human render them animal like render them something that must be stopped i wanted to play with this and try to in a kind of surrealist fashion deal with the trauma of that event but also the second trauma which is the fact that michael brown's body laid on a street for four hours that was the second trauma of that particular day Ferguson once there was a boy who thought it a noble idea to lie down in the middle of the street and sleep for four hours no one bothered him but let him lie on the road as though he were an enchantment this became newsworthy and soon helicopters hovered above hosing his curled torso and thick legs and spotlights televised the world over foreign correspondents focused on the neighborhood and its relative poverty as recognized by the plethora of low hanging jeans worn by shirtless men and loud music issuing from passing cars which had the effect of drowning out everyone's already bottled up thoughts about the boy sleeping in the middle of the street others jumped in front of cameras seizing an opportunity to be seen by their relatives on the other side of town because they had run out of minutes on prepaid cell phones the roadkill in the neighborhood and someone that very block rodents cats possums feeling equal amounts of jealousy and futility each began to rise and return to their den holes cursing the boy sleeping in the street beneath their breaths for his virtuosic performance of stillness and tribulation in the city the drug addicted men and women leaning into doorways like art installations were used to being ignored but they too felt affronted by the boy sleeping in the street and folded their cardboard homes for the first hour he practiced not breathing for 10 seconds he would hold his breath and then he practiced longer sets of minutes during the next three hours until he was unable to stretch out his non-breathing for whole hunks at a time when his breathing returned it was so faint his chest and shoulders barely moved infinitesimal amounts of life poured out of him but no one noticed the police courted off his body and after some time declared him dead because they had only seen black men lying prone on the street as corpses but never as sleeping humans the whole world eager and hungry for a Lazarus moment watched and waited to see when he would awaken and rise to his feet especially his neighbors with minutes remaining on cell phones who filmed and animatedly discourse behind yellow tape the ecstasies and muted sorrows of watching the boy sleep in the middle of the street response to major's poem was written by Amber Goodwin who is a activist and organizer and she is the founder and executive director of the community justice reform coalition she says Ferguson changed everything this poem exemplifies that fact but was equal parts hard to read and to digest just like Ferguson I think this poem tried to look at Michael Brown if he once was referred to as an actual human not just as a victim or a body or at least tried to get there I think this was a way to try to humanize such an inhuman action that happened that day due to gun violence on the other hand how do we deal with an inhumane action of words in this writing and what actually happened or is the actual question do we ever deal with it lord only knows but we have to talk about it in ways that will never forget what happened and also will never forget the uprising and spark that followed it changed me it changed this country Ferguson changed everything you whom I could not say listen to me can we agree kevlar backpack shouldn't be needed for children walking to school those same children shouldn't also require a suit of armor when standing on their front lawns or snipers to watch their backs as they eat at McDonald's they shouldn't have to stop to consider the speed of a bullet or how it might reshape their bodies but one winter back in Detroit I had one student who opened a door and died it was the front door to his house but it could have been any door and the bullet could have written any name the shooter was 13 years old and was aiming at someone else but a bullet doesn't care about aim it doesn't distinguish between the innocent and the innocent and how was this bullet supposed to know this child would open the door at the exact wrong moment because his friend was outside and screaming for help did I say I had one student who opened a door and died that's wrong there were many the classroom of grief had far more seats than the classroom for math though every student in the classroom for math could count the names of the dead a kid opens a door the bullet couldn't possibly know nor could the gun because guns don't kill people they don't have minds to decide such things they don't choose or have a conscience and when a man doesn't have a conscience we call him a psychopath this is how we know what type of assault rifle a man can become and how we discover the hell that thrones inside each of them today there's another shooting with a dead everywhere it was a school a movie theater a parking lot the world is full of doors and you who I could not save may enter a door and enter a meadow or a eulogy and if the ladder you will be mourned then buried in rhetoric there will be monuments of legislation little flowers made from red tape what should we do we'll ask again the earth will close like a door above you what should we do and that click you here that's and that click you here that's just our voices the deadbolt of discourse sliding into place thank you guys for being here i'm gonna read uh the uh a response to that from uh Shannon Watts founder of mom's demand action for gunsense in america it took the mass shooting of 20 babies and six educators at an elementary school in Connecticut to wake me up to the reality that gun violence can happen to anyone anywhere at any time in america no one gets out of america unscathed we all have a story about someone we know who was shot and killed or irreparably injured and while the details of the victim stories differ the outcome is the same death and destruction i didn't choose to get involved in gun violence prevention i was drafted i was drafted by a war that kills more than 90 americans every day and injures hundreds more i'm serving as boots on the ground working side by side with mothers and other women to help stem the tide of lives lost babies toddlers students veterans families no one is immune to the senseless and sudden toll of a bullet and will remain on the front lines until many generations from now the battle against the insanity of so many guns and so few laws is won by our children and our children's children but the fight has to start somewhere and for me it started in new in newton the poem when a child hears gunshots by megan privatello when a child hears gunshots she will say mom is beating the pots and pans she will say it sounds like home let's keep it this way our children misinterpreting the sound of dying as a crude percussion when they kneel at their beds and ask god where he was when their best friend stopped being alive he will say i was at the drive through i was so hungry i thought the gunshots were my stomach begging for food he will say i know nothing until strangers tell me about it first i could have bullet wounds in my hands and i'd know nothing about what hurts what doesn't hurt what a god making the world out of variations of madness refusing to hold its face in his hands and saying you you are mine it is not ours the young blood the unfinished drawings the last blurry thoughts before a world goes black when god is busy wiping the grease from his mouth we can stand in a line with the dead in our backpacks next to our pencils and our snacks he won't notice when we give the whole damned world there's a response to when a child hears gunshots from abby clements second grade teacher at sandy hook elementary school on december 14 2012 and gun violence prevention activist 154 shots they heard them all i thought they were folding chairs falling we huddled into the coats and backpacks some of them cried some of them laughed how could they know and if they knew how could they believe we shared a water bottle a blue one passing it around little arms poking out to take it we waited we had to believe the police were who they said they were i opened the door they scattered a few in my outstretched stretched arms we ran we were lucky surviving is a gift and a burden what do you do with that for me as soon as i could i started to fight i fight to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people i fight to keep guns locked up and away from curious toddlers and depressed teens i fight against arming teachers and i fight to keep guns out of college dorms and classrooms lockdowns active shooter drills and backpacks that morph into shields aren't the answer parents shouldn't have to worry about whether or not their kids will make it home from school a year or two after the tragedy one mom told me that every day after school she left a gift for her daughter sitting on her bed a celebration for making it home always and forever by Ocean Vaughn open this when you need me most he said as he slid the shoebox wrapped in duct tape beneath my head his thumb still damp from the shutter between mother's thighs kept circling the mole above my brow the devil's eye blaze between his teeth or was he lighting a joint it doesn't matter tonight i wake and mistake the bath water rung from mother's hair for his voice i opened the shoebox dusted with seven winters and here sunk in folds of yellow newspaper lies the cold 45 silent and heavy as an amputated hand i hold the gun and wonder if an entry wound in the night would make a hole wide as morning that if i look through it i would see the end of this sentence or maybe just the man kneeling at the boy's bed his gray overalls reeking of gasoline and cigarettes maybe the day will close without the page turning as he wraps his arms around the boy's milk blue shoulders the boy pretending to be asleep as his father's clutch tightens the way the barrel aimed at the sky must tighten around a bullet to make it speak i tell you this there is no language for night bullets my stepfather shot me with a 30 odd six hunting rifle when i was 13 years old on the coldest of nights in january 1970 it cut and sliced its way through my back leaving shrapnel that still leaves my body the force ruined a kidney and shot the nerves of my spine so that i could not walk for months i resist the language of the telling of being shot really this is it this truth of gun violence and domestic violence first he beat my mother and brother and then as i became the protector of my family he took to chasing me along the connecticut river with his gun and his dog he leaned into rape me and i resisted with fury only available to the knowing of a child he would take that gun and hang me from a wall night after night metal below chin and pinned i sit with parents now who have had their child shot i see the wild eyed terror of their children the seconds before they were shot it is terror so visceral that i must tell the truth i'll be reading a poem by martin espada and i want to thank you all for coming my name is karen nicatin and i appreciate the chance to read a poem as a high school teacher in this community heal the cracks in the bell of the world by martin espada for the community of newtown connecticut where 20 students and six educators lost their lives to a gunman at sandy hook elementary school december 14 2012 now the bells speak with their tongues of bronze now the bells open their mouths of bronze to say listen to the bells a world away listen to the bell in the ruins of a city where children gathered copper shells like beach glass and the copper boiled in the foundry and the bell born in the foundry says i was born of bullets but now i sing of a world where bullets melt into bells listen to the bell in a city where cannons from the armies of the great war sank into molten metal bubbling like a vat of chocolate and the many mouths that once spoke the tongue of smoke form the one mouth of a bell that says i was born of cannons but now i sing of a world where cannons melt into bells listen to the bells in a town with the flagpole on main street a rooster weather vane keeping watch atop the meeting house the congregation gathering to sing in times of great silence here the bells rock their heads of bronze as if to say melt the bullets into bells melt the bullets into bells here the bells raise their heavy heads as if to say melt the cannons into bells melt the cannons into bells here the bells sing of a world where weapons crumble deep in the earth and no one remembers where they were buried now the bells pass the word at midnight in the ancient language of bronze from bell to bell like ships smuggling news of liberation from island to island the song rippling through the clouds now the bells chime like the muscle beating in every chest heal the cracks in the bell of every face listening to the bells the chimes heal the cracks in the bell of the moon the chimes heal the cracks in the bell of the world thank you Karen thank you all for your moving readings greatly appreciated that poem of course is the title poem for the book we took the title for the book for more of the lines there and the response to that poem was written by David and Francine Wheeler who are parents of Ben Wheeler who was one of the children who was killed at Sandy Hook David and Francine also found that an organization called Ben's Lighthouse after the shooting because Ben was very fond of lighthouses and the period following the murder of our son this poem was read at several gatherings and at one I David spoke the words myself we feel the irony of the location of our loss Connecticut the birthplace of the American firearms industry Newtown the home of that industry's trade group he's referring to the NSS app there the National Sports Shooting Foundation nearby Waterbury the former brass foundry capital of the country where furnaces melted brass to make bells shifting their production to shell casings for the war effort New Haven home of Eli Whitney who advanced the mass production of firearms more than anyone to move through this landscape day after day carrying the weight of our murdered boy and the hole in our hearts just his shape and size is an unwanted permanent texture of our lives it is however eclipsed and dimensioned by the support assistance and love of our community tucked in these same hills a community where we work to support teach and help others through the organization Ben's Lighthouse created to honor Ben his classmates and his teachers working to heal wherever we can helping his healing so we stay and we listen for the bells thank you all so much for coming tonight we appreciate it we're going to open for questions and discussion if anyone has any questions or would like to make any comments unfortunately we don't have a handheld or a stand for questions for the audience so it might be best just to stand up would anyone on the panel like to add anything at this point okay sorry to pressure you to join the spot does anyone have a question or a comment I have to use this thing they tell me so do you live in Vermont so there's a lot you can do and I think Brian has talked about that we've all talked about that and that is the simple thing of talking to your neighbors I don't think that this we're going to win any any of this battle unless people start talking to each other and talking in ways that matter I just want to say one thing before I tell you some concrete steps that you can do but I've always said you know being an old survivor that you know there's one degree separation now between people who have been shot people who know people who have been shot family members so if there is really one degree of separation then this is part of all of our lives I've been watching this for a really long time there's four shootings that have really affected me well first there's the shootings that happen in urban America all the time every single day every single day and nobody speaks about these shootings nobody speaks about domestic violence in shootings I think one of the things that we can all do is become more informed about gun violence about the ramifications about gun violence and and the trauma that people experience when they experience gun violence I think one of the things that is really important to do is get involved and work on legislation and if you would like to do that I didn't bring any stickers or anything I just got myself here you know Gunsense Vermont has a website and if you sign in I'm happy to report that the awful website we have is being redesigned and will be launched in about three weeks so this next session we are going to be working on three different bills and we need help to do that we need help at the state house we need help raising money every time a group gets together to try to pass a good gun violence bill it's like running a campaign it takes communications it takes lobbyists it takes people on the ground so I'm happy to take your name or maybe there's a sign-up sheet there there's a sign-up sheet there and I will put you on our on our email list but before I so that's one thing you can do I mean that's a huge huge thing you can do and I think the biggest thing is just to look at the issue not in terms of just Vermont but what's happening all across the country so that's a long answer but I I did want to say this one thing because I never really got finished with it so I was shot in 1970 so I have been watching shootings since that time one of the first shootings that really um got to me was Columbine because it it said to me this is this is what can be this is what can happen in this country um the next shooting that really affected me was a friend of mine who was shot in Chicago um and going to Chicago and meeting um a lot of the mothers who are working to prevent their children from being shot every single day the another shooting that really affected me was Aurora because my daughter was there she had just been in Africa for a year and a half and she has a pretty good sense about things and she walked out of the line because she had a bad feeling when Newtown happened I think all of us fell apart and a new version of gun violence prevention activism started so for Newtown I cried for a month every single day all day long because I envisioned you know when you're a child there's a moment of space where you recognize that you're going to be shot so there's a reckoning right this there's a real reckoning I don't care how young that child is and so I would see that right I wouldn't see it in terms of what I experienced but what I knew that they experienced and then after that I have been watching shootings every single day you know it's like the alert goes off on my phone and I say how could there be this happening the shootings that happened this past week before the shooting at the synagogue there was a white man who shot two black grandparents at Walmart I think I think it was at Walmart and I um you know that we've been watching the rate of shootings against people of color rise and rise and rise and then Saturday happened and here we are today so the biggest thing that we can do is to work together and to vote you have to vote and we just have to keep talking to each other because everyone who is an other is at risk and I have always been an other because I was shot so I identify probably more than even other people do about the people that are at risk so open yourselves open your hearts and everyone you see be kind share love there are many organizations of course who provide opportunities to take action if you just keep in touch with those organizations moms demand action is one of them gunsense vermont is another the brady organization is another what are some others so there's a lot of gun violence organizations so and you can look if you live in a city there's like peace and justice center in burlington there's gifards there's every town there's moms demand action there's brady there's us there's a lot of big national groups which are some of those but all you have to really do is go on the the you know the web and put in gun violence groups and there's going to be a huge list so if anybody has interest there is a moms demand that is starting in vermont so we can put you in touch with all of that the brady organization has a program called ask are you familiar with this program where they're encouraging parents to talk to the parents of their children's friends when they're going over to the friend's house to make sure that the guns in those homes are safely stored if there are guns in those homes which is eminently wise i encourage you to do that on your own behalf as well because it's not just kids who get shot accidentally adults get shot accidentally as well yes just wanted to hear back to you what for me were crucial things crucial connections that you made and offered us to consider and so as a white male in vermont i feel obliged to say toxic heterosexism leads to gun violence white supremacy leads to gun violence mass incarceration of violence people coverage leads to gun violence systemic poverty leads to gun violence all of these things are connected as you so publicly offered to us tonight and i think there's a myriad ways we can work to move ahead on these issues certainly for the organizations that you suggest through our families but especially at core for our communities so just thank you so much for the way you open this up for all of us to take home and to deal with and to face and we hope to work thank you again thank you for that comment we did one of these events in chicago at the the church of saint sabina which is run by father michael flagger who's a very well-known activist and gun violence prevention activist one of the the powerful things that he said there was that one of the places where he sees the least conversation of gun violence going on is in places of worship this is coming from a clergyman so i don't know what your religious backgrounds are whether you attend a place of worship but if you do i would encourage you to bring this up with your religious leaders and ask them to have conversations in your congregations about this someone else yes um yeah i just wanted to thank manager jackson for your call and especially acknowledging michael brown and the whole dark symbolism of that whole event but especially your acknowledging of humanity michael brown's humanity guess what for all humans all of our humanity and um you know i feel like there's a tension we have been witnessing atrocities for a long time we know this and we've been asking as we've been witnessing for a long time what do we do well i suggest humanizing i suggest seeing each other as humans like one who suggested being nice treating each other as humans acting there a half hour before the show just sitting on the bench in front of the library and watch seven people come by and question my place because i'm an unknown black man sitting on the bench in the dark so i'm just saying that to the mind of us that peace of love and humanity is a 24-hour practice something that should be practiced in section to michael brown it's practice after you leave here it's practice before you come here it's a 24-hour thing uh humanity did you have a question or comment sure my teaching career in los angeles and my second year teaching in the first month one of my brightest students was murdered and he's right and i just went out with his memory today his name is uh elaine castillo let's have a moment for elaine castillo thank you we're seeing now the world i think comes from this information and not recognizing each other as human beings involving each other that way and next Wednesday here mark potop lives from the southern bribery law center formally with the southern bribery law center will be speaking from seven to eight thirty and i would encourage anybody who's available to come and listen to you on the left thank you yes thank you for encouraging people to get out and vote so even if you have no skin in the game get out and do it without it yes vote yes george i think that with the technology available to begin with we should turn on the lights so we can see who we're dealing with okay george encourage the voters to appropriate enough money sensually use the latest information and technology to keep our kids safe at school yes and it goes all the way from maybe putting a dog in there that knows more than some of the thank you george we can all agree that it's a priority to keep kids safe in school definitely one more question and then we'll go to um book sales society or two more i'm sorry um yeah i was just wondering um i understand oh sorry can you guys hear me or no i can repeat things if you want to yeah i was wondering outside of legislation are there any um outreach groups that are based on kind of a focus on communities disarming themselves where people can volunteer to hand over their guns if they wanted to or um they can maybe open those conversations of the family members other community members are there outreach groups like that and if so what are their names um how do we find out so the question is about outreach groups of voluntarily disarming um a personal weapons do you want to come up so there there's not really a volunteer group but there are groups that do gun buybacks okay so in major cities they do them in the state of vermont they're a little nervous about doing a public gun buyback um but i will tell you that um in other states they do them they've done them in connecticut they've done them in various places as part of this last legislative effort all the guns that um are in storage in the state of vermont are going to be um uh praised by a gun dealer and then they're going to be sold to the public so um to to a gun dealer who will then sell all those guns so um there's a couple of there's a couple of um groups um ourselves and a group called pennywise foundation and we've gone all over to the big people to ask them what it would take for us to um get those guns and give them to artists and make them into plow shares um but we're afraid that before we can actually do that they'll they'll be sold before we get enough money to do it but we have also just asked the city of burlington if we can do a gun buyback i mean not me personally but if they would do a gun buyback because the police can do them um pretty easily so it would be a matter of us just all trying to get together and um talk to the people i feel like there's areas we could do it in vermont um and the president of our c3 board is is has been reaching out to try to do one so i say we're not going to do one but people want to do one and if you give me your name and you're really interested in that i'm going to put you in contact with um the people that are trying to do it i would love to do it there would be nothing that would make my day then to buy all those guns they told me i'd have to become a gun dealer but i'm sure i could find one um and i would buy all those guns and they would go to artists and they would become plow shares and then they would be given to farmers or or whoever right that is like my biggest dream metal from sell the jewelry that has a number from the weapon there was not the right stamp on the jewelry and they take the money that they raised from selling the jewelry and put them into more gun buyback programs caliber delivery so maybe i'm going to call them and figure out how they do that and then they can help us get all the guns that are going to go back out on the street one more yes we brought their guns their toy guns and i forget what happened to them but they were disarming themselves and i think also it comes back to uh how much violence there is in in media in the movies and on television and so there's so many layers to this but again it's the children also actively participating in this and understanding when they're playing with their guns that that is all part of the future yeah thank you thank you all for caring