Wear Orange Support ending gun violence

By Marian Wright Edelman

May 29 was Memorial Day in the United States, and the long weekend that is traditionally observed with shared American remembrance made headlines again for the shared all-American epidemic of gun violence.

The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, which keeps track of American gun violence incidents, noted there were at least 175 people killed and another 496 injured during the Memorial Day weekend, and 20 mass shootings in which four or more people were injured or killed. This included the mass shooting on a crowded beachside promenade in Hollywood, Florida that injured nine people, including four children, the youngest just one year old.

Other shootings happened during neighborhood or community conflicts. Many happened at home, with a family member’s own gun. The Gun Violence Archive now calculates that more than 17,000 people have died so far this year in the U.S. from guns, including more than 100 children under age 12.

June is National Gun Violence Awareness Month, and June 2-4 is Wear Orange Weekend to join thousands of others across the country calling for an end to gun violence in all of its forms, including domestic violence, suicide, and city gun violence. The Wear Orange movement began in honor of Hadiya Pendleton, an honors student and drum majorette who was shot and killed on a Chicago playground in January 2013 just days after she had performed in President Obama’s second inaugural parade. As President Obama gave his State of the Union speech that year, he remembered Hadiya: “She was 15 years old. She loved Fig Newtons and lip gloss… She was so good to her friends, they all thought they were her best friend. Just three weeks ago, she was here, in Washington, with her classmates, performing for her country at my inauguration. And a week later, she was shot and killed in a Chicago park after school, just a mile away from my house.” and ‘yes’ to a great future.” Hadiya could have meant a future like her own; the talented high school sophomore was excelling at her college preparatory school, doing everything right, with the world ahead of her.

But all that changed because of a gun. Wear Orange began on June 2, 2015, the day that would have been Hadiya’s 18th birthday. It is now observed nationally every year on the first Friday in June and the weekend that follows. It was Hadiya’s friends who originally chose to remember her by wearing orange, the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others.

Hadiya Pendleton deserved to be protected. She, and the thousands of other children who have been killed by guns in our nation in the 10 years since she died, deserved the freedom to grow up. Last year, former First Lady Michelle Obama unveiled plans for the Hadiya Pendleton Winter Garden at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

By Ben Jealous

Tatum is an East Texas town of about 1,300 people, closer to Shreveport than Dallas. It’s on the north shore of Martin Lake. Across the water sits a coalfired power plant named after the lake that happens to be the single largest sulfur dioxide polluter in the United States.

Paulette Goree, who has lived in the area her entire life, gets a daily reminder of the Martin Lake Power Plant. “I use a personal air monitor every day to figure out if I should spend much time outdoors.”

She thinks the air pollution contributed to the deaths of family members and the respiratory problems she and her husband have. A Sierra Club report estimated that, in the two counties surrounding Tatum, coal plant pollution contributes to two premature deaths every year. That’s a fraction of the 154 people who die annually in part due to what’s spewed out of Martin Lake’s smokestacks, according to Clean Air Task Force.

It’s why Paulette and other volunteers across the United States are fighting for the federal government to enforce clean air standards already on the books and to strengthen those requirements to reflect what technology can do now to make the air breathable again.

“It just isn’t right, and the EPA needs to do better,” she said. “It’s too late for me and my generation, but we need to improve the air for our younger generations.” of controlling their damage, plants are forcing Americans to bear higher healthcare costs from coal pollution. We should no longer subsidize coal generation, and the electric bills of some Americans, with the lungs of Americans who live in Tatum or Cheshire, Ohio, or New Madrid, Missouri—anywhere the remaining 158 coal plants operate.

It’s a fight I’ve been part of for more than a decade, one that led me to launch the Climate Justice Program at the NAACP. It’s still true that these coal powered killers and other industrial polluters more often than not sit in communities of color and where residents have the least economic power. Thankfully, we’ve been able to get hundreds of those power plants retired.

And we don’t have to. The cost of coal power generation is rising while the cost of electricity from renewable solar and wind farms is falling steadily. Only one coal plant nationally operates for less than a clean energy alternative that could replace it. It’s one reason why the historic clean economy funding that President Biden and Congress approved in 2021 and 2022 is vital. We have the money to put an end to coal power once and for all.

The unmistakable injustice is that nearly two thirds of the remaining coal-fired power plants in this country could and would have to address their deadly pollution if we were enforcing and strengthening the Clean Air Act, as the Sierra Club’s report showed. Effective pollution control technology exists. But instead of taking on the expense

There are 154 people who live downwind of Martin Lake who can’t afford a delay of another year. And 154 the year after that. For them it’s a matter of life and death. We have proven ways to make the air cleaner and we have a law that demands that. We need to act now.

Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club, the nation’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.

As a sixth-grader Hadiya had appeared in an anti-gang video to encourage other young people to avoid gang violence, saying, “It’s your job as students to say ‘no’ to gangs

Mrs. Obama said, “I never had the chance to meet Hadiya while she was alive, but after she died, I was able to spend some time with her loved ones. I learned about how she was an honor student, how much she loved music, how she loved going out to get ice cream with her friends. And the more I heard, the more I understood the extraordinary potential inside her—a potential that was stolen by the epidemic of gun violence.”

She continued: “Like me, Hadiya was raised by parents who wanted to give her opportunities they never had. They signed her up for volleyball, cheerleading, and a dance ministry at church. They supported her education, and with their encouragement, she became a star student. From an early age, Hadiya’s parents made sacrifices to introduce her to opportunities throughout Chicago so that she could one day find her place in the world.”

Hadiya, who should be turning 26 right now, never got that chance. We must never tire of the really hard work demanded to transform the pervasive culture of violence and pervasive presence of guns in America.

We must love our children more than the gun manufacturers and some NRA members love their guns. We must love our country enough to ensure the safety of our children and of all of us and demand the future free from gun violence that all of our children deserve.

Marian Wright Edelman is founder and president emerita of the Children’s Defense Fund.