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Wednesday, May 19, 2021
The new normal?
World News Israel and Palestine
Graphic by Emma Nguyen
Avery Franks and Emma Nguyen
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unior Maddy Schlegel was sitting in her room watching TV in the spring of 2020 when she heard a loud cracking noise. She removed one of her headphones to listen for a second, but the noise stopped. She continued with her show, never once taking her eyes off the screen. “It ended up being that somebody had shot from their car while driving along my street, in the opposite direction of my house,” Schlegel said. “Had they shot on my side of the street, a bullet could have gone through my window, and I didn’t even look.” Schlegel is the president and founder of the March for Our Lives Club at Greenhill, which promotes conversation and activism around gun violence in the United States. According to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks violent incidents involving firearms, there have been 198 mass shootings in 2021 as of May 11. The archive defines a mass shooting as an incident where four or more people are killed or injured, not including the perpetrator.
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Going to a progressive school like Greenhill and having conversations like we do, there is a better chance that kids will realize how wrong this is and grow up to be activists. However, these shootings are not sending a good message to these kids or helping them in any way.”
“We, as a society, almost become numb to it because it happens so often,” Upper School Dean of Students Jack Oros said. “When the Sandy Hook and Colorado [shootings] happened, ‘Oh my God, it’s happening!’ And we get desensitized to it.” This trend of increased gun violence has caused many to wonder how it will affect the younger generation, and if they will develop an increased desensitization to these events. Fatigue from COVID-19 has also led to more gatherings in an attempt to return to normal, which has increased the risk of gun violence in large groups of people. “Now that things are opening up and people are getting vaccinated, it means going back to having mass shootings every single day and having to hear about these tragedies on the news after a long day of work or school,” Schlegel said.
The pre-COVID “normal” Before COVID-19 became widespread, “the normal” meant frequent headlines of mass shootings and gun violence. Last year found gun sales soaring at the start of the pandemic; authorities reported 3.7 million background checks in March 2020 alone. Experts like Lisa Geller, state affairs manager at the nonprofit Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, say this isn’t a coincidence.
COVID-19 and its restrictions have prevented Americans from accessing social services to the detriment of mental health. “I think we are very aware that food insecurity, isolation and lack of social services are risk factors for many forms of gun violence,” Geller said in an interview by NBC News. The overwhelming nature of gun violence, Associate Head of School for Mission, Community and Culture Tom Perryman adds, has led students to normalize such events to avoid constantly living in fear of a shooting happening to them. “The absolute biggest risk of this whole situation is that we become jaded to it and we almost treat it as if it’s normal when there’s another shooting,” said Perryman. “Human beings, when they are confronted with awful things over and over, eventually have to put up protective defenses.” Junior Anissa Bryant, vice president of the campus March for Our Lives Club, believes that the lack of activism and the government’s failure to act contribute to the normalization of the issue. “The next generations to come are definitely going to feel [numb] if we keep having shootouts and the feeling that things aren’t going to change because the government isn’t doing anything,” Bryant said.
Search for solutions The debate over gun violence remains deadlocked in Washington, D.C. where the power of the National Rifle Association and Republican opposition to gun-control measures in Congress have blocked meaningful action. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on April 26 to review a major Second Amendment rights case, New York State Rifle et al v. Corlett, on whether carrying firearms should be allowed outside the house. President Joe Biden has promised gun reform on behalf of his administration, but a conservative Supreme Court majority could thwart that effort. At Greenhill, COVID-19 restrictions, activism fatigue and the normalization of gun violence has meant fewer conversations regarding the issue. “Going to a progressive school like Greenhill and having conversations like we do, there is a better chance that kids will realize how wrong this is and grow up to be activists,” said Bryant. “However, these shootings are not sending a good message to these kids or helping them in any way.” Since the 2018 Middle School Walkout protest against gun violence following the Florida shooting that left 17 people dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the Greenhill community has rarely addressed the issue. Most conversations around gun violence are driven by student advocacy, which takes place in classrooms and in clubs. “I am so proud of our students for
recognizing their power and their agency, and their ability to change the world,” Perryman said. “This country has seen how powerful students could be. But then, as is often the case, we kind of get complacent, and we stop fighting for things that really matter.” It’s difficult to say how much the drop in gun violence activism stems from COVID-19 guidelines that have restricted such movements and gatherings from happening.
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The people who make decisions, we have to force them to make them. We have to pressure people into giving us basic rights and basic protections .”
“We have not had assemblies on gun violence or have any classes that have dealt with that,” Oros said. “We just can’t get many kids close to each other in a space and still have our six-feet social distancing. I’m sure that will be in the fall, we’ll pick those [conversations] up again.” In the shadow of such incidents as the 2012 murder of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and more recent school shootings, the administration has also taken steps to increase student safety. Glass windows on campus have been reinforced to include a shield. Campus security has also been strengthened to include experts who are trained to deal with an active shooter. But in broader American society, the search for solutions appears to have stalled— despite the fact that 57% of Americans favor further restrictions on the sale of firearms, according to a Gallup poll. The Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has passed two bills aimed at strengthening the nation’s gun laws, but Senate Democrats lack the 60 votes needed for the bills to advance. This inaction frustrates many Americans, including Greenhill students. “The government doesn’t protect us as much as they should, and I think we realized that much younger than other generations,” Schlegel said. “The people who make decisions, we have to force them to make them. We have to pressure people into giving us basic rights and basic protections.” Schlegel and Bryant don’t feel like enough has happened on campus to create the pressure that will produce results in Washington. “I don’t blame the [Greenhill] administration because they can’t read our minds if we aren’t saying anything,” said Bryant. “What can an administration do if the students aren’t doing something to force them to take action?”
Violence has continued to flare across several cities in Israel and Palestine this week after demonstrations in East Jerusalem following the eviction of Palestinian families in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood. Israeli law allows Jewish people to reclaim property that they owned in East Jerusalem prior to 1948. Current international law considers East Jerusalem Palestinian territory. The Israeli Supreme Court postponed a hearing on these evictions to decide the constitutionality of the expulsion due to the violence. The Israeli government argues the evictions are a private land dispute while a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres described East Jerusalem as territory occupied by Israel.
India COVID-19 cases in India spiked dramatically in late April and have continued to increase, with new cases surging past 400,000 each day. Experts say this spike is due to a second wave that caught India unprepared. As a result, hospitals are running out of basic medical supplies, leaving many patients to die from a lack of oxygen. Family members of those affected by COVID-19 have been forced to search frantically for open ICU beds or to turn to the black market for oxygen sold at high costs. Many international families have found themselves unable to travel due to the risks, and cannot see their loved ones. Countries such as the U.S., United Kingdom and Japan have sent vaccines to India, but distribution is slow.
Colombia In response to recent protests, the Colombian government has killed dozens and injured over 800 people. Another hundred or so have disappeared in suspected government-linked extrajudicial abductions. Citizens expressed their outrage with government corruption, economic and social inequality and pandemic-related tax reforms. In the western city of Cali, the epicenter of the demonstrations, protesters haven been met with severe police brutality. “This government wants everything from us, but we have nothing, and now they’re using violence to silence us,” protester Juan Carlos Neiva said in an interview with USA TODAY.
Myanmar Myanmar has seen the civilian death toll rise to nearly 800 since the military overthrew a popularly elected government in February. Former state counselor leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 recipient of the Nobel Peace prize for her efforts to restore democracy in the Southeast Asian country, initially shared power alongside the military before being ousted in the Feb. 1 military takeover. The military, called the Tatmadaw, has restricted civilians’ internet access. Despite the bloody crackdown on civilians, in which government troops have opened fire on civilians, democratic protesters have continued to take to the streets of major cities. “The call [to protest] is much bigger now,” said activist Wai Hnin Pwint Thon in an interview with VOX.