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gun violence
Multiple People Killed in Wisconsin School Shooting
"This reality is inexcusable," said one prominent gun control group. "We owe it to our children to #EndGunViolence."
Dec 16, 2024
This is a breaking news story... Please check back for possible updates.
Multiple people including the alleged shooter were killed and numerous others were wounded following a mass shooting Monday at a Christian school in Wisconsin's capital city.
After initially reporting a higher death toll, Madison police said three people were killed and seven others were hospitalized following the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in the city's East Buckeye neighborhood. The alleged perpetrator was reportedly a 15-year-old female student at the school who shot and killed a teacher and a student.
"When officers arrived, they found multiple victims suffering from gunshot wounds," Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes—who called it a "sad, sad day"—told reporters at a press conference.
Our hearts ache deeply as we confront the devastating tragedy at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. Once more, we are shattered by the horror of a school shooting that has claimed innocent lives and left many injured—a grim reminder of the ongoing crisis plaguing our communities.
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— Joe Sakran, MD, MPH, MPA (@josephsakran.bsky.social) December 16, 2024 at 10:33 AM
"Yet another police chief is doing a press conference to speak about violence in our community, specifically in one of the places that's most sacred to me as someone who loves education and to someone who has children that are in schools," the chief said.
"Stop asking why schools don't have bulletproof glass and metal detectors at all the doors," Barnes added. "Ask why schools have to. That's the question that needs to be asked."
Gun control advocates condemned the shooting and lack of action toward tackling a decadeslong public health crisis that's claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
"This reality is inexcusable," said Brady United Against Gun Violence. "We owe it to our children to #EndGunViolence."
March for Our Lives, a youth-led gun control movement, said, "One thing is clear: This act of violence should have never been possible."
"But it is, because our 'leaders' are more interested in pandering to the gun lobby to score political points than they are in keeping us safe," the group continued. "It is sickening to know that school is not a safe place to be a child in America thanks to politicians' inaction."
"Today, our hearts break once again, but our resolve strengthens," March for Our Lives added. "We refuse to inherit a country where mass shootings are acceptable. We will fight on for a safer future."
The progressive group A Better Wisconsin Together said in a statement that "every kid deserves to go to school without fearing for their lives, teachers deserve to feel safe at work, and parents deserve to drop their kids off at school and not wonder whether their child will be a victim of gun violence."
"A Better Wisconsin Together continues to fight for a future where all Wisconsinites are free to learn in school, go to work, and move through our local communities without the fear of gun violence," the group added. "Enough is enough."
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The Madness of Luigi Mangione
A calculated and brutal murder of health insurance executive Brian Thompson has ripped open the skin enclosing a vast repository of popular rage.
Dec 12, 2024
Before hanging on December, 2, 1859, John Brown slipped a note to a jailer:
“I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without verry much bloodshed; it might be done."
Many abolitionists had painfully reached the same conclusion – the institution of slavery had become too entrenched, powerful and emboldened to be disassembled by means of rational discourse, or moral appeal.
Slavery is not, in the literal sense, the issue today, but the decidedly inevitable manner in which present day events drag the suffering masses hopelessly along, evokes a parallel set of themes to those that confronted John Brown 165 years ago. At what point do crimes of wealth, power and profit, committed by the rulers of society at the expense of those who have no means of defense, reach a moral tipping point? When does the polite habit of acquiescence reach a place and time where a significant portion of the public accepts that the usual means of redress via debate and politics no longer offers relief from intolerable suffering? This question had a simple, unquestionable answer for John Brown.
Violence may be everywhere in the US - school shootings, random gun violence, chemical toxins, proxy wars, domestic abuse, suicides, drug overdoses and, pointedly, an epic and endless body count from systemic medical neglect - but we have not seen a single recent act of violence purposefully launched against the corporate powers that assault vulnerable people, until last week. Slavery and the genocidal obliteration of the indigenous population may be America's "original sins," but now we have an environmental catastrophe synchronized with growing levels of poverty and a US military budget that sucks up every spare dime of tax payer cash. Are we really on the cusp of Armageddon, and, if so, when does violent resistance become morally justifiable?
Mangione escaped on an electric bicycle, but the act appears to have peeled back the repressed veneer of passivity and resignation that characterize the mindset of America, and revealed a shocking substrate of U.S. collective distress.
Violent acts carried out on behalf of systematically brutalized victims have been so vanishingly rare in U.S. history, that John Brown's unsuccessful raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 may well be the only such peacetime event that has ever had lasting impact on our national fate.
We know, of course, that Brown's attempt to arm slaves, and use captured weapons from the attacked federal armory at Harper's Ferry (as a means to spark a widespread insurrection against the economic institute of slavery) had been destined to fail. In the end, Brown and his men were quickly defeated and captured. Brown sustained serious wounds from a sabre and two of his three sons were killed in the fighting against soldiers led by Robert E. Lee. Frederick Douglas refused Brown's invitation to join the insurrection - Douglas deemed the plan to be suicidal. The Harper's Ferry raid was put down in days with 16 deaths—10 were members of Brown's group. The "raid" took place in October of 1859, Brown's trial unfolded in November, and he was hanged before a large assortment of soldiers and onlookers on December, 2, 1859. Nonetheless, Browns unsuccessful raid had attached itself to the gears and pulleys of history—slavery was done for.
I am, like most observers, struggling to find historical context for the absolutely remarkable events in the past few days in which a heretofore anonymous young man, Luigi Mangione, assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson on a New York City street. Mangione escaped on an electric bicycle, but the act appears to have peeled back the repressed veneer of passivity and resignation that characterize the mindset of America, and revealed a shocking substrate of U.S. collective distress.
Jokes, snark, celebration and the almost instant lauding of the assassin have reverberated across social media. For a nation so morally confused, lost and numbed that the public willfully handed a mandate to the mediocre, bumbling fascist, Donald Trump, a mere month ago, it appears almost surrealistic to contemplate both the quantity and the quality of resentment that smolders beneath our seeming national mood of defeat. The referendum on violence as a viable form of redress has been - as it was immediately following the events of Harper's Ferry 165 years ago - proven to be unresolved and ongoing.
Unlike John Brown, who had been a major public figure - a celebrity and vibrant voice on the issue of slavery long before his capture at Harper's Ferry - Mangione emerged out of nowhere to (perhaps inadvertently) represent millions of dispossessed, voiceless individuals. While the act of assassinating a major perpetrator in the bloodbath of the US predatory health insurance industry seemed, in retrospect, likely to open up societal rifts, few could have predicted how pitched and strident the public outcry would be.
Songs lauding Mangione's assassination of Thompson have gone viral on the internet. "Free Luigi," has become a meme. T-shirts with the slogan "Deny, Defend, Depose"—written on the bullet casings from Mangione's fatal shots—have been printed on t-shirts that sell for $25 on many sites. Other shirts have Luigi Mangione written in script across a picture of the video game character, Luigi, holding a gun. Another shirt portrays a child holding a machine gun with the slogan, "Universal Healthcare, Let's Give It A Shot". It is indeed ironic that Mangione’s anti-corporate deed should inspire so much entrepreneurial zeal.
One of the verses of a Jonathan Mann song posted on YouTube begins with the following verse:
You can draw a straight line
As straight as they come
From the misery of millions
To Brian Thompson
Under his leadership Profits rose
And all that it cost was a million gravestones
Some have labeled Mangione a folk hero, but if John Brown's legacy proves at all prophetic, pundits, politicians and anonymous keyboard warriors will battle to shape Luigi Mangione into a collection of caricatured interpretations.
Charles J.G. Griffin, offers this from a 2009 paper entitled, 'John Brown's "Madness"':
"But on one point, at least, a great many of Brown’s contemporaries were agreed: Brown himself was almost certainly “mad.” In pulpits, public meetings, and a significant number of the nation’s 4,000 newspapers, North and South, Brown was routinely judged to be “deluded,” “fanatical,” “maniacal,” or “crazed.”........Some pointed to heredity or personal tragedy as the source of Brown’s derangement, dismissing Harper’s Ferry as a frightening but isolated incident. Others saw Brown as a man driven to insanity by the words or deeds of others, arguing that the raid was representative of the increasingly chaotic and irrational state of the Union itself. And still others believed that Brown’s mania was divinely inspired, his raid a providential intervention into the nation’s affairs."
It would seem, from two of the most famous depictions of John Brown - by Frederick Douglas and by Henry David Thoreau - that those who lauded Brown regarded him as quite sane. Thoreau, in his "A Plea for John Brown," written shortly before Brown's trial said this:
"Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves."
It should be noted that Thoreau's admiration for Brown was unequivocal. Unlike the pundits of today, who feel absolutely mandated to offer a condemnation of violence as a sort of rhetorical tic, Thoreau, well known as a seminal figure in the evolution of non-violent resistance, never tempers his admiration for Brown with doubts about the captured hero's chosen methods.
Frederick Douglass, speaking at the graduation ceremony at Storer College 21 years after John Brown's execution had this to say:
"The crown of martyrdom is high, far beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, . . . Cold, calculating and unspiritual as most of us are, we are not wholly insensible to real greatness; and when we are brought in contact with a man of commanding mold, towering high and alone above the millions, free from all conventional fetters, true to his own moral convictions, a “law unto himself,” ready to suffer misconstruction, ignoring torture and death for what he believes to be right, we are compelled to do him homage."
Douglass, like Thoreau, observed that ordinary human beings must contemplate heroes from behind a veil of their own limitations.
But what about Luigi Mangione? Should we be universally obligated to first offer a reflexive disavowal of violence before we even begin to unpack his significance? We are just beginning to learn a little bit about Mangione - that he comes from a privileged background, that he has a masters in engineering from an Ivy League school. We also have reason to believe that he is unusually thoughtful and cautious for a man who took the mortal risk that not one in 330 million US residents had taken. In his review of Theodore (The Unabomber) Kaczynski's manifesto he wrote:
"Fossil fuel companies actively suppress anything that stands in their way and within a generation or two, it will begin costing human lives by greater and greater magnitudes until the earth is just a flaming ball orbiting third from the sun. Peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest isn't possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self defense."
While partial approval of the unabomber's societal formulations may not be a good look from a public relations standpoint, Mangione's assessment of the current human predicament rather follows the standard model proposed by any number of responsible climate scientists—the only difference is the proposal that violence may be the only intervention to stymy the fossil fuel extinction juggernaut.
Where do we set the moral threshold of violence?
I had suggested, as a thought experiment—before Mangione's capture—that we view the assassination of Brian Thompson as having a parallel to the 1942 killing of Nazi monster Reinhard Heydrich. Few of us would feel comfortable condemning Czech assassin, Jan Kubis, for hurling a fatal grenade at Heydrich's Mercedes in the May, 27, 1942 assault that took out the architect of Nazi genocide. Political violence summons violent retribution that ordinary people like myself have no willingness to risk. In Kubis' case, he met his last moments face to face with 800 machinegun wielding SS troops. Mangione is certain to spend the rest of his gifted life behind bars if he is not killed in custody.
Is it okay to kill Heydrich, but not Thompson? Where do we set the moral threshold of violence?
The quest has already begun to reduce Mangione to a generic lunatic. Cable news is awash with public psychiatrists eager to pronounce him with a neat mental health diagnosis. As such, the past effort to "insane wash" John Brown is being brought out of historical mothballs. The editors of Counterpunch have just published Mangione's alleged "manifesto," and I am struck by the measured, rational, modest tone of this single paragraph:
“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”
In preparation for this piece I read the section in Martin Luther King's autobiography discussing the dialogue between MLK and Malcolm X—a rhetorical confrontation ironically cut short by the assassination of both men. I learned that MLK was not entirely comfortable with merely a "moral" argument on behalf of non-violence - he also felt compelled to make a practical point - that the Black community lacked the force of numbers and preparedness to challenge the militarized state.
As a lifelong believer in nonviolent civil disobedience, I am not comfortable at all advocating for political violence, but, like Thoreau, I feel that I have no right to condemn those like John Brown or Luigi Mangione who invest their entire being toward the goal of liberation. Objectively, I wonder if nonviolence and violence are opposites or, rather, shades of one another, complementary tactics working in tandem. When MLK was murdered, people rioted for almost two weeks and 43 people died.
It is likely true that a vibrant population might manifest its determination with both acts of civil disobedience and violence. The more fearful and repressive a society becomes, the smaller the window for civil disobedience. I suggest that political writers, rather than condemning violence as a glabella reflex, ought to be analyzing the viability of peaceful protest. Luigi Mangione tells us that peaceful protest has no effect on corporate malice.
It is too early to know how significant a historical figure Luigi Mangione will ultimately become. The American news cycle can obliterate almost any event in short order. It seems, at this point in time, that Mangione has ripped open the skin enclosing a vast repository of popular rage. One hopes that his violent act summons the force of sustained civil disobedience - general strikes, public protests, non-payment of taxes and a willingness to bring the corporate machinery of death to a grinding halt. The fact that people can suddenly imagine such improbable things is, in and of itself, astonishing. Two weeks ago we were effectively dead.
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Media Justice as The Onion Buys Infowars From 'Hateful' (and Bankrupt) Alex Jones
"This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything's kind of insane," said the CEO of The Onion.
Nov 14, 2024
In what one journalist called an "insane twist" to the long saga of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' use of his online platform to spread rampant disinformation, satirical newspaper The Onion on Thursday announced it had won an auction to buy Infowars, Jones' bankrupt publication.
Jones declared bankruptcy in 2022 after the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting won nearly $1.5 billion in damages in lawsuits they filed over Jones' repeated claims on his show that the shooting had been a hoax.
Jones claimed the families and victims—20 first graders and six educators—were crisis actors, inciting his supporters to threaten the grieving families.
The auction included everything from Jones' desk and production studio to his diet supplement line, and the Sandy Hook families supported The Onion's effort to take control of Infowars, which the company said would be relaunched as a parody of itself.
"The Onion's goal with the acquisition is to end Infowars' relentless barrage of disinformation for the sake of selling supplements and replace it with The Onion's relentless barrage of humor for good," said the company in a press release, which did not state how much The Onion paid for Infowars.
Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion's parent company, Global Tetrahedron, toldThe New York Times that he and other leaders at the newspaper initially thought purchasing Infowars "would be a hilarious joke" to play on Jones.
"This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything's kind of insane," he told the Times.
Collins, who previously reported on misinformation for NBC News, reached out to a lawyer representing Sandy Hook families and asked for their input on The Onion's auction bid. The families approved.
"By divesting Jones of Infowars' assets, the families and the team at The Onion have done a public service and will meaningfully hinder Jones' ability to do more harm."
"From Day One, these families have fought against all odds to bring true accountability to Alex Jones and his corrupt business," said Chris Mattei, the families' lawyer. "Our clients knew that true accountability meant an end to Infowars and an end to Jones' ability to spread lies, pain, and fear at scale... By divesting Jones of Infowars' assets, the families and the team at The Onion have done a public service and will meaningfully hinder Jones' ability to do more harm."
Mattei added that the families rejected Jones' offer "for allegedly more money if they would only let him stay on the air because doing so would have put other families in harm's way."
Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed at Sandy Hook, said in a statement that the families had been "told this outcome would be nearly impossible, but we are no strangers to impossible fights."
"The world needs to see that having a platform does not mean you are above accountability—the dissolution of Alex Jones' assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for," said Parker.
The Onion has "made an indelible mark on the public response to school shootings," said the company, pointing to its repeated printing of the headline, "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens," which has appeared in the newspaper 37 times following school shootings.
Advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety plans to work closely with The Onion on the new Infowars parody site, which Collins said would mock "weird internet personalities" who traffic in misinformation. Everytown has signed a multiyear advertising deal with the company.
"Alex Jones has profited off the pain of Sandy Hook families," said Everytown, "and his brand of hateful disinformation has seeped into mainstream American culture.We're excited to join them as they turn the page on this toxic chapter of misinformation and begin the next chapter of InfoWars, turning it into a tool to combat disinformation and extremism through humor. Not only will this new venture staunch the flow of hurtful misinformation, but it also holds significant potential for us to reach new audiences in the fight for gun safety."
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