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The year was 1955. Emmett Till was a young African-American boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi. One day Emmett was seen "flirting" with a white woman in town, and for that he was mutilated and murdered at the age of fourteen.
To the shock of many, his mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral so that the public could see what happens to a little boy's body when bigots decide he is less than human. "I just wanted the world to see," she said. "I just wanted the world to see."
The world did see, and nothing was ever the same again for the white supremacists of the United States of America. Because of Emmett Till, because of that shocking photograph of this little dead boy, just a few months later, "the revolt officially began on December 1, 1955" (from Eyes on the Prize) when Rosa Parks decided not to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
But I am telling you now, that moment will come with the Newtown photos – and you will have to look. You will have to look at who and what we are, and what we've allowed to happen. At the end of World War II, General Eisenhower ordered that thousands of German civilians be forced to march through the concentration camps so they could witness what was happening just down the road from them during the years that they turned their gaze away, or didn't ask, or didn't do anything to stop the murder of millions.
We've done nothing since Columbine – nothing – and as a result there have been over 30 other mass shootings since then. Our inaction means that we are all, on some level, responsible – and therefore, because of our burying our heads in the sand, we must be forced to look at the 20 dead children at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Most of us continue to say we "support the Second Amendment" as if it were written by God (or we're just afraid of being seen as anti-American). But this amendment was written by the same white men who thought a Negro was only 3/5 human. We've done nothing to revise or repeal this – and that makes us responsible, and that is why we must look at the pictures of the 20 dead children laying with what's left of their bodies on the classroom floor in Newtown, Connecticut.
Yes, someday a Sandy Hook mother – or a Columbine mother, or an Aurora mother, or a mother from massacres yet to come – will say, like the mother of Emmett Till, "I just want the world to see." And then nothing about guns in this country will ever be the same again.
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FredHayek wrote: We didn't show the death of Osama Bin Laden a terrorist why show the death of innocent children? Would you want the parents to have to see this time and time again? You are a heartless person. America knows what happened but you and the fat slob Michael Moore want to wallow in it. You do live up to your name.
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And if it's the parents who release those photos, because they see their children like that every time they close their eyes anyway, instead of how they should be able to remember them? Sometimes you have to be heartless and slap people across the face with the truth of reality. Most of America has absolutely no clue what happened, not on a personal, emotional, daily level like those parents and those first responders do, and other parents and first responders who've had to clean up after other situations like this. Do you know that there are some who've had to leave their jobs and are dealing with PTSD thanks to what they saw there? Do you comprehend the depths of those parents' horror every night, seeing their mangled childrens' bodies in their nightmares? You have no clue just imagining it, just as this country had no clue until Emmitt Till's mother forced them to look. Until the country was forced to see what US soldiers had done in Viet Nam. Until Bosnian genocide photos surfaced. And so on and so forth. Look at those photos and tell me you're okay with the way we live right now? Until we are no longer able to deny the evidence because it is staring us in the face, our imaginations will keep it pretty, and clean, and sterile and we IGNORE it. No, I don't want to wallow in it, but I do want there to be something done about it this time, and if that means facing a horror that will never be erased from our memories so we learn from it and get motivated now, then suck it up cupcake. As Moore said, nothing changed after Columbine, and if pro-gun advocates aren't willing to come to the table and discuss anything, then we continue the cycle - is that okay with you?FredHayek wrote: We didn't show the death of Osama Bin Laden a terrorist why show the death of innocent children? Would you want the parents to have to see this time and time again? You are a heartless person. America knows what happened but you and the fat slob Michael Moore want to wallow in it. You do live up to your name.
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Im baaaack wrote: By the way Wicked...your "who &what we are" title is disgusting and repulsive. If that's what you really think then I can't imagine what YOU see when YOU look in the mirror.
Don't paint with such a broad brush...as your liberal friends always like to say. Good grief.
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