Tag: Fort Hood

a new outrage

Vote for Democracy #61

(Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash)

There have been so many outrageous horrors from the Trump administration that it has been impossible to chronicle and comment on them all, but one of the latest ones has sparked a lot of public discussion, so I wanted to post about it.

Last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the execution of Nidal Hasan, who was found guilty in the shooting at Fort Hood in 2009 by a military tribunal, would be livestreamed for the public. The plan is that Hasan will be executed by military firing squad at Fort Hood on Dec. 3rd. Adding to the horror is that fact that Hasan is paralyzed from the waist down, a result of the police response to the shooting, and uses a wheelchair.

I have opposed the death penalty since I was a child on moral grounds and my church and many other faith-based and human rights groups also publicly oppose it as an affront to human dignity. It has been shown not to be a deterrent to crime. There is also the fear that, because Hasan was motivated by Muslim radicalization, Islamist extremist groups would use his public execution as a rallying point to recruit more members and carry out attacks.

We also should not look at suffering, pain, and death as entertainment. Part of the reason that there have not been public executions in the United States since the 1930s was that they sometimes turned into public spectacle, echoing history such as the torture and killings in the Roman Coliseum. Nearly all countries in the world have outlawed capital punishment and the few that do allow it usually keep it out of public view. Most videos of people being executed in recent times are of terrorist groups killing their hostages.

I believe that death sentences should be commuted to life in prison. The community is protected and the state does not itself commit murder, interrupting the cycle of violence and recognizing human dignity. There will probably be legal action to block the livestreaming of the execution and also to delay it. It is even more complicated than other death penalty cases because it came through the military rather than civil court system. Perhaps, the administration will listen to the outcry and change their plans.

We can hope.

Not again…

Here we are again. The top news story is about yet another mass shooting in the United States, this time in Isla Vista, California. Sadly, it seems appropriate to re-post this entry from April 3, 2014, which couples the country’s problem with mass shootings by deranged persons with the aftermath of a local mass shooting.

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Last night, when the news broke about the shooting at Fort Hood, the first thought many people had was “not again.” Not again at Fort  Hood, and not again in general.

The timing was especially poignant for those of us in the Binghamton NY area, because today marks the fifth anniversary of the American Civic Association shootings, in which fourteen people died, including the mentally ill gunman, and four were wounded.

Despite the tragic loss of life, the ACA shooting is usually not present in the list of mass shootings that gets recited in the media when the next horrible shooting comes along. Columbine. Virginia Tech. Aurora. Newtown. Fort Hood.

I am not saying that we should not be remembering these other mass shootings. We should, and we should be doing more to avert similar deaths and injuries in the future.

What I do find disturbing is that so many have forgotten about the ACA tragedy. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why.

I am afraid that the primary reason is that the gunman and most of the dead were immigrants. Most of them were gathered in one of the American Civic Association’s classrooms, taking a class to improve their English skills, when they were shot. They were from Vietnam, China, Pakistan, Iraq, Haiti, Brazil, The Philippines. Two were in Binghamton as visiting scholars. Others had been resettled in the area as refugees. The ACA is well-known in the area as a gathering place for immigrants to study English or prepare for citizenship tests. Several of those who were shot were employees or volunteers who had embraced this important mission. Somehow, though nearly all of us in the United States are descended from immigrants or are immigrants ourselves, the story of the ACA shootings did not embed itself into our minds as have some of the other tragedies that took place in schools or other public settings. I’m sorry to say that I think people see themselves or their grand/children as being just like those gathered in an elementary school or at a movie theater, but that they don’t see themselves as people from a different country, with a different skin color, speaking with an accent, working toward citizenship.

Five years on, I don’t want these people to have been forgotten. I want them to be remembered – and to be remembered as neighbors, as members of our community, as people like us.

 

Fifth Anniversary of the ACA shootings

Last night, when the news broke about the shooting at Fort Hood, the first thought many people had was “not again.” Not again at Fort  Hood, and not again in general.

The timing was especially poignant for those of us in the Binghamton NY area, because today marks the fifth anniversary of the American Civic Association shootings, in which fourteen people died, including the mentally ill gunman, and four were wounded.

Despite the tragic loss of life, the ACA shooting is usually not present in the list of mass shootings that gets recited in the media when the next horrible shooting comes along. Columbine. Virginia Tech. Aurora. Newtown. Fort Hood.

I am not saying that we should not be remembering these other mass shootings. We should, and we should be doing more to avert similar deaths and injuries in the future.

What I do find disturbing is that so many have forgotten about the ACA tragedy. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why.

I am afraid that the primary reason is that the gunman and most of the dead were immigrants. Most of them were gathered in one of the American Civic Association’s classrooms, taking a class to improve their English skills, when they were shot. They were from Vietnam, China, Pakistan, Iraq, Haiti, Brazil, The Philippines. Two were in Binghamton as visiting scholars. Others had been resettled in the area as refugees. The ACA is well-known in the area as a gathering place for immigrants to study English or prepare for citizenship tests. Several of those who were shot were employees or volunteers who had embraced this important mission. Somehow, though nearly all of us in the United States are descended from immigrants or are immigrants ourselves, the story of the ACA shootings did not embed itself into our minds as have some of the other tragedies that took place in schools or other public settings. I’m sorry to say that I think people see themselves or their grand/children as being just like those gathered in an elementary school or at a movie theater, but that they don’t see themselves as people from a different country, with a different skin color, speaking with an accent, working toward citizenship.

Five years on, I don’t want these people to have been forgotten. I want them to be remembered – and to be remembered as neighbors, as members of our community, as people like us.