Back to school - in peril, again ...

My latest for the Minnesota Star Tribune

Hi Readers,

Sharing here again my latest column for the Minnesota Star Tribune.

There will be a gift link to the full column at the bottom (please let me know if you have trouble accessing it). This piece is really close to my heart as a mom and a pastor - and just as an American who desperately wants us to prioritize our shared humanity over hatred, fear, and guns.

As I write this, parents across Springfield, Ohio are receiving those dreaded alerts: in phone, email and text. Bad news always comes in threes.

COME AND PICK UP YOUR CHILD. NOW.

Parents know the feeling when you see your child’s school phone number pop up on your phone. Instantly, your senses are heightened, your heart beats faster …

Earlier this week, when I got out of the shower (pretty much the only time I am ever unreachable as a parent) I saw that I had a missed call from my oldest son’s middle school. There was no voice mail.

I didn’t call back because I knew it would go to the main school number and with hundreds of students, how could I expect them to know why my son was calling me? I told myself it was something simple: a forgotten assignment, a missed lunch. If he was sick or in danger or in trouble, they would have left a message, right?

Still, I spent the rest of the day, while working and talking to colleagues, wondering about that phone call. How could I not?

Our kids, yet again, have begun their school year in peril.

Bomb threats last week at elementary schools in Springfield, Ohio, are just the latest casualty of American childhood. Families, kids and teachers had their back-to-school thrown into upheaval due to hysterical and ridiculous repeating of a ludicrous internet rumor about Haitian immigrants, repeated not only by U.S. senators and right-wing influencers with millions of followers, but also by a former president on national television during a presidential debate.

Their calculus seemed simple: Make a few wild and salacious claims about immigrants, score a few political points to own the libs, gain the attention of a frenzied news cycle for at least a few hours, pick up followers and maybe gain a piece of a Russian paycheck in return. (Last week, an indictment revealed that six conservative influencers were being paid by a media company allegedly funded by Russian state media with the end goal of “amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition” to Russian interests.)

Why do our kids always have to pay the price?

In this environment, it’s no surprise that last month, as parents across America prepared to send their kids back to school, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released an advisory warning about parental stress as a significant public health issue.

A week after Murthy’s warning, a 14-year-old boy brought a gun to his school in Apalachee, Ga., killing two students and two teachers and injuring nine others.

Again, parents received alerts on their phones. Again, they rushed to rescue their kids. For some, they were too late.

One mother from Apalachee didn’t have to wait until her phone alerted her of the shooting. The shooter’s mother, Marcee Gray, had called the school that morning to ask them to check on her son after he sent a text message saying: “I’m sorry, mom.”

A week earlier, the shooter’s grandmother had visited the school for a meeting about her troubled grandson. His aunt, Annie Brown, told the Washington Post that he was “begging for help from everybody around him … the adults around him failed him.”

The shooter’s grandfather blamed the shooter’s father, who was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children for allegedly providing an AR-style firearm to his son while knowing he was a threat to others.

In the background of this case, as in so many other mass shootings, was family trauma and domestic violence. The shooter’s mother had been arrested on suspicion of keying her husband’s car and drug possession. The family had been evicted from at least one home as the parents went through a bitter separation and custody battle, according to CNN.

As the author of a forthcoming book on the crisis of radicalization and violence among young white men and boys, I found this story to be all too familiar. And one thing I couldn’t ignore was seeing again and again how women’s voices were dismissed: their warnings of male violence and anger and its threat to the public went unheard, while police arrested the shooter’s mother.

Again and again, white men and boys are given the benefit of a doubt by law enforcement and community officials. Until it’s too late. And the sad reality is that while many in authority likely think they’re helping white men and boys by giving them extra chances and ignoring the violent threat they pose, the truth is that they’re only making the crisis worse. White men and boys are the violent perpetrators, and they’re also victims of violence and destruction, often against themselves, as we saw in the tragic court appearance by the shooter and his father following the school shooting in Apalachee. …

Read the full article here at the Minnesota Star Tribune

(That should be a gift-link; please let me know if you have trouble accessing).

Thanks for reading, more soon.

Angela

P.S. …

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