On Wednesday, May 25, I gathered with about 100 others on the Greenfield Town Common. After an hour, there was music, dancing, and drumming.
But it was far from a celebration. That day marked two years since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a policeman who placed a cruel knee on his neck long enough to kill him while four officers watched. At the time, many believed his murder, on top of many other recent and historical attacks, would bring a “reckoning” for the U.S. as it faced the realities of racial inequalities.
Four local groups sponsored and organized the 2nd anniversary events, asking people to take “a public stand against racial violence, gun violence, and the ‘military mentality’ so affecting all people, life, and planet.” They also urged people to explain their participation to “friends, family, and news media.”
I joined with much more dedicated activists by “standing out” for the first time since the Vietnam era. Although there were a multitude of other issues swirling about at that time, protesters’ basic goals were focused on two issues, both controlled by the federal government: the military draft and the war itself. Eventually, we were successful in ending both, although not without thousands more lost in an unwinnable war, including many conscripted against their will, and an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 young men fleeing the country to avoid being drafted.
The problems identified by the local May 25 organizers are very clear, and national and international in scope — racial violence, gun violence, a military mentality — but simple, clear solutions are not. Two of those problems often intersect, as seen in Buffalo on May 14. An unbalanced young man evades “red flag” gun-purchase restrictions by claiming a violent message he wrote in high school was just a joke, legally purchases an assault rifle near home, modifies it to allow a higher-capacity magazine, then travels to a chosen Black neighborhood to kill as many innocent people as possible. He attempted to live out some of the white supremacist dreams supported and glorified in the dark caves of internet forums.
Along with hundreds of others, NBA Warriors head coach Steve Kerr (his own father shot to death by terrorists in the Mideast) publicly raged against a U.S. Senate that refuses to even consider a bill passed by the House more than a year ago, HR 8, which requires expanding background checks to include private sales and gun shows. He noted that hundreds of millions of Americans (81% in a recent Pew poll), support this level of restriction while only 50 people in the Senate are blocking it.
Universal background checks are a start, but not a final answer, as can be seen by the ability of the Buffalo and Uvalde shooters to bypass them. But for such a widespread problem, small steps are important in moving towards a safer world for everyone: all ethnic backgrounds, all ages, all economic groups.
The U.S. took one of those steps in 1994 when it banned assault weapons. The rate of mass shootings went down slightly over 10 years, but after Congress refused to renew it in 2004, mass shootings have tripled.
Proud to live in Massachusetts, which has relatively strict gun laws that are seen as a model for other states, most enacted under Republican governors, I was also forced to realize and accept that even statewide actions are affected by the absence of national regulations. Smith and Wesson, a prominent manufacturer of assault weapons, will simply move its headquarters from Springfield, Massachusetts to Tennessee, after the state Legislature considered banning their production. The move will erase about 700 local jobs, but S&W will still employ about 1,000 in the state.
I agree with My Turn writer Daniel Brown that my presence at a Town Common protest doesn’t serve a well-defined “pragmatic purpose.” Instead, it became, for me, a moment of shared mourning, especially for the young, old, and in-between gun-violence victims. These include innocent Americans just trying to live their lives, as well as innocent Ukrainians at the mercy of military weapons like those used in the Buffalo, Uvalde, and countless other American massacres, a direct result of Russia’s “military mentality.”
I hope that protests across the nation can raise awareness, start or expand conversations that lead to concrete actions. Attitudes can only change when a problem is recognized. Too often, they change only gradually, like the ocean against rocky cliffs, taking years, even generations, to carve a new consciousness.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on a Saturday. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.