My brother in law committed suicide.
I only met them a few times, My sister’s Husband. We’re not on the best relationship terms, my direct family and I, because of all the trump supporter stuff. You know, the explicit support of republicans and their agenda. That sort of thing. What got me really mad today was that my dad called me asking if I could help them find his phone. The dead husband’s phone, the one that just shot himself. Apparently they can’t find it.
Yes I use iPhones, so I should be able to find it, right?. The conversation quickly went to why he killed himself. They don’t know, maybe he was depressed or sad. No signs of mental distress. My Dad said it’s everyone’s choice what they do. That’s true, but it’s also a choice to make Guns so readily available in America that anyone can have one. “It’s their right to have one”. Sure, but this is the result, He’s dead. “No but it was his choice to kill himself”. A choice that would be so fucking hard to carry out if he didn’t have a fucking gun where you just pull the trigger and something dies.
I got mad at him, because I like my dad and he’s pretty reasonable. But this Gun shit pisses me off. Because Our rights and the Law and the rules are all made up. We make them up. And when we have rules and laws and a culture to follow them, things happen. We create an environment. Right now we have an environment in America where gun deaths are easy to come by. Suicide is easy, Mass Shootings are easy, and School Shootings are easy. You want your rights, sure, have your guns, but this is the result.
America wants mass suicide and school shootings. That’s the purpose of these laws. The purpose of a system is what it does. It’s a fucking fact. Our system kills people. That is the design.
I feel really sad for my sister. But I can’t mourn or be gentle or careful because we rarely speak. I don’t know him very well at all, there’s no emotional sadness. I’m not gonna fake that. I am fucking enraged though. So mad that it can be so clear why something happened, and the people that you used to look up to and turn to for advice and wisdom, will say reductive defeated things to explain away why someone killed themselves.
The difference between a bad day and his last day, was a gun.
I don’t know if you’ve been reading the news lately, but in America, there’s mass deportations going on. Or at least the attempt of it. The mass dissolution of our rights, and our institutions. The looting of our public works and sensitive data. The robber barons have returned in force and are taking everything they can get their hands on. But we don’t have to cede anything to them, or accept it, or do nothing.
I’m enraged because a Coup is genuinely being carried out in my country in broad daylight, but we are culturally bound from doing anything because our entire society is built around respecting capital. The rich are smart, the masses dumb. They are skilled, we are not. The police protect the property of the wealthy, while trampling the rights and well being of everyone else. Which is everyone. I’m fucking mad because I NEED to work, and provide for my family, and pay off a shit ton of debt, when I also NEED to be organizing and educating. Beating the doors of my neighbors down, and demanding that they bear witness to the wholesale destruction of what we take for granted.
We are not powerless, or outnumbered. I will not succumb to fear, nor will I become overwhelmed and allow my joy and focus to wander and be ruined. I’ve learned that in America nobody is coming to save you, you have to save yourself.
Nobody is coming to save us, we have to save ourselves.
Nothing will get better unless we MAKE it better.
I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to organize. Double down on my studies of Spanish, economics, and our political system. I’ll spread as much literature and knowledge of our rights in this country as I can, with the time that I have. I won’t stand a racist shit to persist in my presence without making them feel unwelcome, and ashamed. I’m also gonna get jacked as fuck.
I don’t give a fuck about debating or reasoning with the shitheads. That’s not how you change things. You force change. You change the culture, what’s accepted, and what’s not acceptable by making a stand. Over and Over and Over again. You give the people, the majority, the tools to know what their capable of, and the courage to wield their power. We are all in this together, not one of us are alone.
If you want a better world, make one.
I’m gonna fucking make one.
-kow