#marjory stoneman douglas

[whenweallvote]

Today marks six years since the tragic mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

As we honor the 17 Parkland victims and send love to their families today, we also mourn for all lives lost and forever changed by gun violence since — including everyone impacted by the shooting at the SuperBowl Parade JUST a few hours ago.

Don't let ANYONE tell you there's nothing to be done about gun violence. It’s up to the politicians WE elect to propose and enact critical gun safety measures, and other bills to protect our children and communities.

Our Vote is Our Voice. Make sure you, your friends, and your family members are all registered to vote today at weall.vote/register.

[boldlycrookedsalad]

[dewpostcards]

Received from Canada. From my favorite postcard collection.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Natasha Korecki at NBC News:

David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting at his high school in Parkland, Florida, who turned into a national anti-violence activist, has launched a bid to serve in leadership of the Democratic National Committee.  Hogg, 24, announced on Monday he is running to become a vice chair of the DNC, arguing he would focus on winning back young voters who have drifted from the Democratic Party to Republicans. That shift came profoundly, and abruptly, in November, when young voters who predominantly favored President Joe Biden just four years earlier backed Donald Trump in larger numbers than any Republican presidential candidate since 2008, according to NBC News exit polling.

“Moving forward, we must have a renewed focus on our youth outreach in all states and territories to rebuild our coalition after the massive shift to the right among young voters this election,” Hogg said in a statement. Beyond reaching out to young voters, Hogg is urging the party to take a deeper look within itself to assess the setbacks that befell Democrats on Nov. 5. He was critical of some of Kamala Harris' team, among others, saying they took on an almost blasé attitude after the vice president lost, despite warning repeatedly of dangers that Trump would bring to democracy if reelected.

"You raised an absurd amount of money. This was our race to lose, and we lost it. And it's time to really peel back the curtain and say, 'Okay, what did we do wrong?' Instead of just protecting the consultants that brought us into this place in the first place," Hogg said in an interview. Hogg said he is aggressively tackling the race to become DNC vice chair, having already emailed every one of the 448 active members of the DNC who would cast a ballot in the election and rapidly booking follow-up conversations. Hogg expressed outrage over what he described was a lack of awareness by the party in the months before the election. Hogg said that at a brunch during the August Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he asked why the party wasn't doing more to reach out to young men. "I got messages from different consultants saying, 'Here you go, saying this stupid stuff again.' As if they know what young people are thinking, when it's emblematic of the broader problem at hand for the Democratic Party, where we would rather choose to live in a consultant-curated fictional reality," Hogg said.

[...] Hogg's announcement is the latest in recent activity around new DNC leadership, since current DNC Chair Jaime Harrison announced he was stepping down. The party itself is reeling after losing the White House to Trump despite outspending him and boasting of superior organizational strength in the weeks leading up to the election.

David Hogg, who was brought into the spotlight in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, FL, will launch a bid for the DNC Vice-Chair.

[jazsparklez]

Hey everyone, I’ve been away from tumblr for a really long time and have decided I will not be posting anything on here very often however I will still be active and replying to any messages you would like to send me :) I’m a member of the TCC and would be super happy to talk about it with anybody who is also interested <3

[thequeenofsastiel]

Please reblog I'm very curious

[actual-sleeping-beauty]

i would love to never see that gifset of carlos with the guns again. sorry like. perhaps i am simply too traumatized by the gun violence that has haunted my literal entire existence on this earth but. no.

[filosofablogger]

HOW. MANY. MORE. ???????????

Painting on iconic rock at Michigan State University https://www.gunviolencearchive.org You ask when I’m going to stop writing about guns and gun violence?  When somebody finally DOES SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!

[trench]

School shooting video game isn't what you think

For the past two and a half decades, edgelords have made video games in their mother’s basement about school shootings. In 2007, some troll made a flash game that was hosted on Newgrounds about the shootings at Virginia Tech. That game was mostly made for the attention, and the game’s creator tried extorting money from the internet to take it down. Then in 2013, that same troll made another…

[tfbsattic]

6 years ago, on this day, THAT ASH WEDNESDAY, a shooter massacred 14 students and 3 faculty members of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. May St. Valentine pray for the heavenly repose of those souls.

A blessed Valentine’s Day in heaven to them all.

[politicsnc]

It's not just the guns. It's the Republicans.

On Monday, my community saw the results of Republicans’ dystopian view of the world. Around 1pm, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill issued an alert, telling all students to shelter in place. An armed and dangerous man was on campus. Within minutes, the town was shutdown. Law enforcement from across the region flooded onto campus. News video showed officers in bulletproof vests moving…

[morbidology]

In the aftermath of the Parkland high school shooting, in which 17 people were killed by Nikolas Cruz, the New York Times ran an article featuring several survivors.

Gracing the front cover was Anthony Borgues, a 15-year-old student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. During the February 14th massacre, Anthony was shot five times as he barricaded a classroom door, protecting 20 classmates. The bullets tore into his lung, abdomen and legs. “

To think about that moment is difficult. It’s not easy to heal,” he said.

[littlepawz]

“The Last Lockdown” by Manuel Oliver who lost his son Joaquin in the shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.

[warriyorcat]

3 dead, 5 injured. I was maybe planning to go to MSU because it's a good school. I don't know anymore.

When my mom first told me about the shooting one of the first things I asked was "how many?". She said "they don't know yet". Gun violence is so ingrained in our culture that I didn't have to specify that I was inquiring about the number of victims when I asked how many, and my mom knew exactly what I was talking about.

There was a shooting on Michigan State University campus reported 8:30pm Feb 13 2023. It's one of the biggest schools in the state and a lot of people here have friends or family who go there. Details are still coming out but there may have been some fatalities. I'll update with more info when we get a clearer picture of what happened

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Clay Jones, Claytoonz: The new GOP mantra

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 25, 2024 (Thursday)

Momentum continues to build behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and the national narrative as a whole has shifted.

Democrats appear to be generating significant enthusiasm among younger Americans. Yesterday, for the first time in their history, the March for Our Lives organization endorsed a presidential candidate: Kamala Harris. Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, organized March for Our Lives after the shooting there in 2018. Executive director Natalie Fall said that the organization “will work to mobilize young people across the country to support Vice President Harris and other down-ballot candidates, with a particular focus on the states and races where we can make up the margin of victory—in Arizona, New York, Michigan, and Florida.”

Andrea Hailey of Vote.org announced that in the 48 hours after President Biden said he would not accept the Democratic nomination, nearly 40,000 people registered to vote. That meant a daily increase in new registrations of almost 700%.

People are turning out for Harris in impressive numbers. In the hours after she launched her campaign, Win With Black Women rallied 44,000 Black women on Zoom and raised $1.6 million. On Monday, around 20,000 Black men rallied to raise $1.2 million. Tonight, challenged to “answer the call,” 164,000 white women joined an event that “broke Zoom” and raised more than $2 million and tens of thousands of new volunteers.

Another significant endorsement for Harris came yesterday from Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, who wrote on social media: “I’m committed to beating Donald Trump. The only vehicle left for me to do that with is the Democratic Party. If that requires me to vote for, speak for, or endorse [Kamala Harris] then count me in!” Duncan’s public announcement offers permission for other Georgia Republicans to make a similar shift. In 1964, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond similarly paved the way for southern Democrats to vote for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Harris’s appearances are generating such enthusiasm from audiences that when she delivered the keynote address this morning at the convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, Texas, the applause delayed her ability to begin. After a speech defending education and calling out the cuts to it in Project 2025, Harris ended by demonstrating that after decades of Democrats being accused of being anti-American, Trump’s denigration of the country has enabled the party to claim the position of being America’s defenders.

“When we vote, we make our voices heard,” Harris said. “So today, I ask you, AFT, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.”

Today the Commerce Department reported that economic growth in the second quarter was higher than expected, coming in at 2.8%, thanks to higher spending driven by higher wages. The country’s changing momentum is showing in media stories hyping the booming economy Biden’s team tried for years to get traction on. “Full Employment is Joe Biden’s True Legacy” was the title of a story by Zachary Carter that appeared yesterday in Slate; CNN responded to today’s good economic news with an article by Bryan Mena titled: “The US economy is pulling off something historic.”

With Harris appearing to have sewn up the nomination, the question has turned to her vice presidential pick. That question is fueling the sense of excitement as potential choices are in front of cameras and on social media advocating Democratic positions and defending the United States from Trump’s denigration. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro listed the economic gains of the past years, and said: “Trump, you’ve got to stop sh*t talking America. We’ve got to start standing tall and being patriotic and showing how much we love this amazing nation.”

The vice presidential hopefuls appear to be having some fun with showcasing their personalities, as Minnesota governor Tim Walz did in his video from the Minnesota State Fair where he and his daughter went on an extreme ride. So are social media users who have dug up old videos of, for example, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explaining how he would pilot a small starfighter that had lost its auxiliary shields, or Arizona senator Mark Kelly’s identical twin brother Scott pranking a fellow astronaut on the Space Station with a gorilla suit Mark smuggled on board.

That sense of fun is an enormous relief after years of political weight, and it has spilled over into making fun of the Republican ticket, most notably with a false story that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance wrote about—and I cannot believe I am typing this—having sex with a couch. The story is stupid, but worse are the denials of it, which have spread the story into populations that otherwise would likely not have seen it.

Just two weeks ago, Vance appeared to be the leader of the next generation of extremist MAGA Republicans, but now that calculation seems to have been hasty. Vance is a staunch opponent of abortion—the key issue in 2024—and he has been vocal in his disdain of women who have not given birth, saying in 2021, for example, that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to say that people who don’t have children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.

Republican commentator Meghan McCain noted that Vance’s “comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump supporting friends. These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian.” Actor Jennifer Aniston, who tends to stay out of politics, posted: “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.” Vance had called out Harris by name in those 2021 comments, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff took to social media to defend Harris from Vance’s attacks on her as “childless,” calling her “a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” Harris’s stepdaughter chimed in: “I love my three parents.”

Vance also ties the Republican ticket firmly to Project 2025. The Trump camp has worked to distance itself from Project 2025—not convincingly, since the two are obviously closely tied, but it turns out that Vance wrote the introduction for a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who was the lead author of Project 2025. The book appears to popularize that plan, right down to its endorsement of a “Second American Revolution,” and according to the book deal report, proceeds from the book will go to the Heritage Foundation “and aligned nonprofits.”

Now Vance’s words praising Project 2025 will be in print, just in time for the election. Yesterday, Trump posted: “I have nothing to do with, and know nothing about, Project 25 [sic]. The fact that I do is merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs. Do not believe them!”

Trump is clearly aware of, and concerned about, the changing narrative. This morning, he called in to Fox & Friends, saying, “We don’t need the votes. I have so many votes. I’m in Florida now…and every house has a Trump-Vance sign on it. Every single house…. It’s amazing the spirit…. This election has more spirit than I’ve ever seen ever before.” Tonight the Trump campaign proved their worry by backing out of debates with Harris, saying debates can’t be scheduled until she is the official nominee, although Biden was not the official nominee when they met in June.

The larger narrative shift has affected the media approach to Trump, who is accustomed to shaping perceptions as he wishes. Now, 12 days after the mass shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, there is increasing media attention to the fact that there has still been no medical report on Trump’s injuries, although he wore a large bandage on his ear at the Republican National Convention and said at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday that he “took a bullet for democracy.”

Yesterday, FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress that it is not clear whether Trump was “grazed” by a bullet or by shrapnel, words that former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called “FBI speak for, ‘it’s unlikely it was a bullet.’”

CNN chief medical consultant Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted last week that the people need a real medical evaluation of Trump’s injuries, explaining that “gunshot blasts near the head can cause injuries that aren’t immediately noticeable, such as bleeding in or on the brain, damage to the inner ear or even psychological trauma.” But, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has noted, much of the press has kept mum about the story.

Media outlets have reported Wray’s testimony, though, and in a social media post today, Trump called on Wray, whom he appointed to head the FBI, to resign from his post for “LYING TO CONGRESS.” Tonight, he reiterated that “it was…a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.”

Perhaps eager to get back to their districts, House Republicans canceled their expected votes on appropriations bills scheduled for next week and left town today for their August recess. The House will not reconvene until early September. The government’s fiscal year 2025 begins on October 1.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON