Upstream

I was first drawn to Cambodia when I heard about the crisis of children being trafficked into sexual slavery. When I came I met an organization whose primary focus was rescuing and rehabilitating these children. They spoke about how after some time of rescuing children from brothels, they asked themselves "how do we stop these children from being trafficked in the first place?". When explaining this they used the analogy of a stream.

If you are standing in a stream and see a drowning child, you rescue them. As more children come downstream you continue to save them. Until it becomes too much and you have to ask yourself, what is happening upstream that is causing this catastrophe? And that is when you dig in your heels and go against the current. That's when you do the hard work of looking at underlying issues and advocating for the innocent.

The prayer for, rescue of, and rehabilitation of these abused children is important and critical. But eventually they needed to move beyond that. 

For each shooting that has happened in recent years, I have wept. I have prayed and cried and mourned for the families and friends who have lost innocent loved ones to gun violence. 

When the Las Vegas shooting happened in October I was speaking to a friend in utter despair. She said she was so angry that people use these terrible events to further political agendas. I didn't fully understand what she was talking about and agreed that there is a time to mourn and a time for politics. 

But what I have learned in my time of working for justice overseas is that we can mourn the loss of today at the same time that we are advocating for a better future; the two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they go hand in hand. 

It is not enough anymore to send a prayer and shed a tear for lives lost. It is time to say that these lives are valuable enough that we cannot stand to lose another to needless gun violence. 

I used to think it was disrespectful to use catastrophe to discuss politics. 

I now see that we must discuss politics to prevent future catastrophes and honor those we have lost. 

I used to think I could avoid politics and instead advocate for justice. 

I now see that while politics and justice are often enemies, we the people have the power to make them allies. 

The ball is now in our court. How will we use our actions and voices to advocate for the lives lost? Because these empty tears are not enough anymore... Maybe they never were.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-41474594/las-vegas-how-us-mass-shootings-are-getting-worse

https://everytown.org/learn/

https://www.gofundme.com/stonemandouglasvictimsfund