serendipityoucity

I send my kids to school expecting them to be safe. 

Last night, a famous kids radio programme had a psychologist on it to discuss the shootings at Dawson College in Montreal. 

Last night i had to discuss safety with my childrend.  I asked that today, when they go to school, that they make themselves acutely aware to where the exits are.  That they visualize these as they walk through the halls, and when they get into each classroom that they visualize escape routes.  I asked that they do this once or twice to brand this information into their brains in the event they have to get out fast.  I explained how mobs of frigtened people behave, forwarned them about getting jammed in staircases, corners and doorways.  I explained that calm level headedness and a cool and calm demeanor will keep them and their classmates safe.  Even if their heart is beating fast.  I asked that they help and protect the less vulnerable around them at all times and to assist the wounded.

I also asked that they pay acute attention to people around them and that they never ever bully or harass those that are different, who look like outcasts who they perceive as weird.

I did this as a result of yesterdays shooting where a man with a 45, a 12 and a semi automatic weapon opened fire in a school cafeteria in a school in downtown montreal.  Also, because for sick societal reasons, others sometimes copy these actions. 

Today, i hope they are safe at school.

Yesterday i watched little kids being escorted out of their daycare near the school by police officers in bullet proof vests, and tears streamed down my face - mums and dads have to explain to them that something very bad has happened - and then have to say goodbye to them the next day when they send them back to school or daycare.  Proximity and knowing the geography of a place somehow makes it more relevant.  My kids were once locked down in primary school as bullets were fired in the viscinity.  Yesterday, i saw the distraught faces of young adults as they escaped to safety from the shooting at Dawson College and heard the reports over and over on the Radio Canada.

I then stood dumbstruck when my kids said with complete certainty and in a matter of fact tone that the killer deserved to die and that all shooters like them deserve to die.  I was stunned!  After all these years of discussing why and how people become criminals, how sometimes physiological brain development prevents reasoning, that a history of abuse, growing up in poor conditions, addition, or mental illness leads people to do terrible things, how society abandons certain people, how institutions fail them, how we are fed garbage violence in movies, games and music that for some, if not for just a moment makes them do terrible things! That we should feel sorry for people who suffer like this and not wish them illwill.

Media make it cool to have a gun, to be tough and resolve problems with violence.  Essentially acting as free commercials for the gun manufacturing industry.

Fuck you gun manufacturers who create products with the explicit intent to harm

Fuck you US national rifle association who actively market tools to harm

Fuck you Harper for wanting to cancel the gun registry, and

Fuck you media companies who colonize the minds of our children and youth with violent games, images, sounds, archetypes, and music.

Fuck you to the people who saw the gunmen’s website and its content and did not take it seriously, did not have the wherewhithall to regiter that this person was a ticking time bomb.

Fuck you to the gunmens friends, family and acquaintances who did not try to temper this man, to reason with him and to point out that something was very very wrong.

Fuck the rest of us for being irresponsible, who vote against investment in social policy and community development, who do not adequately support child welfare institutions who are supposed to take care of our children, for not taking care of our neighbours, who spend so much time working to acquire and are so busy in our day to day lives that we not longer have the time and energy to care for the people in our communities, and for not not taking care of our children.

Please, let my children come home without incident and safely from school today.