May We Get There Together

By Geri Loizzo

Another week, another shooting. Just in the past two weeks, we have seen unspeakable killings — of children and their teachers finishing their school year in Uvalde, of cherished elders and guardians shopping in a Buffalo grocery store, and of churchgoers sharing community in Laguna Woods. It has become a common occurrence for us to witness precious lives cut short in an instant by rampant, toxic masculinity and the glorification of gun violence. Dr. King warned us about the afflictions of greed, hatred, and racism. Where can we begin to fathom a way forward in our personal lives and our collective society?

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By Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD

I write this sickened by what has come to feel like a new normal: each week another outbreak of the epidemic of gut-wrenching violence that has been eating away at our body politic, increasingly in recent years. The latest blow: thirty one innocent people killed in El Paso and Dayton—including the people of color, women and Mexican nationals targeted—by two young white men infected with the violent ideologies of white nationalism and toxic masculinity. How can such tragedies happen here and now? How can families back-to-school shopping and couples on date nights be unsafe in twenty-first century America? While the voices of white blindness point the finger at mental illness or video games, mental health professionals, women, gender non-conforming individuals and people of color—for very different reasons—know better. This kind of violence is directed every minute every day at people with black or brown skin, couples of mixed race, all women, the LGBTQA+ community, refugees, immigrants and at those who practice non-Christian faiths such as Judaism, Islam and Hinduism.

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