While Colleen and I have pretty much all the same opinions on political issues, there are some that one or the other of us is more active in than the other. Gun violence prevention is sort of my thing. Soon after the wife and I came to Howard County, there were two shootings in Maryland, at Great Mills High School and the Capitol Gazzette. And while there’s something awful in its own way about violence in places that it’s less common, the long-term story of gun violence is how it harms communities of color and economic disadvantage on a daily basis. They survive and thrive, these people and the places they live, don’t get me wrong. But what incredible heights could they climb to within a larger culture nurtures them instead of watches them suffer.
That’s one of the things that I wanted to discuss over a bite of food with Liz Banach, Jen Paulioukonis, and Nicole Berger. They’re leaders in Maryland’s gun violence prevention (GVP) movement, and they’d agreed to talk to me about their work.
Start Spreadin’ the News
Immediately after my chat with the GVP women, I had to make my way to my and Colleen’s erstwhile home, New York City, to prepare our Upper East Side apartment to be seen by prospective buyers. On the train back up to our once-upon-a-time, I settled into a window seat. I had more than three hours to reflect on all I’d just talked to the GVP-ers about. The train car was oddly empty and quiet for a weekend. The woman next to me, it turned out as we chatted, was from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, where 26 people, 2o of them under the age of eight, lost their lives in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. Her son, who looked to be five or six years old, was with her. I kept thinking, “What if he had been at the school that day? What if he’d been number 27?” As his mom folded open a book and he began playing a game on her phone, I looked out the window.
Related: See what Howard County Sheriff Marcus Harris told Colleen was his mission.
Pandemic Parade
A train ride up Amtrak’s Northeast corridor is one through scene after scene of disadvantage, decay, and forgotten locales. As we left Baltimore, passing by piles of broken-up lumber and eerily inactive industrial plants, I thought of how it had been Nicole’s home for many years and was a big part of why she’d gotten involved with Moms Demand Action.
“I had lived there for eight years and worked there for 14. It was my city, and I couldn’t understand how so many people seemed numb to the daily gun violence there,” she’d said to me over lunch at Cured/18th & 21st earlier in the day. America’s failure to pass hard-hitting federal gun reform after the Sandy Hook massacre had left her deeply disappointed. But, after the 2017 Women’s March, she felt empowered to use her voice to work to effect change.
Just as Liz, seated next to Nicole across from me, was about to tell me what got her involved in gun violence prevention efforts, a notification came up on her cell phone. It was Jen. She wouldn’t be able to join us as planned, because both her children needed to go to the doctor. I smiled, because it was a classic instance of Jen’s ability to be tough and tender. She can dish in her no-nonsense way as one of the most effective activists in Annapolis, but she’s also a caring mom.
Her role as a mother was what got Liz involved in GVP, too.
“I thought my kids were at the Columbia Mall when there was a shooting,” Liz told me, putting her fork down and resting her hands in her lap. “It turned out they weren’t, but those moments when I thought they were…I didn’t want any other mother to go through that,” she said.
Teachers and Students
As my train to Manhattan picked up speed after a quick stop in Wilmington, Delaware, it passed a school edifice with two gargoyles perched on either side of a discolored steeple. It reminded me of what Liz had said about the best way to get involved in GVP.
“It’s so much about educating yourself. Go to the Moms website,” she said glancing over and smiling at Nicole, “go to the MPGV website. See who’s already involved to see how you can help,” she said. She also suggested making GVP a priority in what candidates you vote for for local office and in your charitable giving.
Nicole agreed with Liz.
“Definitely…a great first step would be reaching out to Moms and Marylanders,” she said. I remembered how local progressive activist royalty, Miss Carole Fisher, took me to meet Liz last year. The GV preventers in front of me agreed that connections with others was a great idea. Gun violence prevention, is, after all, about nurturing community.
Just outside Philadelphia, the train passed a withering, weathered billboard advertising an upcoming gun show in the city. I shook my head, “no.” I looked across the aisle at the Sandy Hook denizens and smiled at the image of the little boy fast asleep with his hands loosely gripping his mom’s phone still.
And: Colleen was also lucky enough to dish with Howard County Rec and Parks director John Byrd.
“My father is a gun owner and wholeheartedly supports what I do,” Liz had said to me earlier. “We already have responsible gun owners on our side,” she’d offered. That doesn’t include the extremists (my word), of course, especially the ones who use “gun rights” as code for an array of fanatical right-wing thinking.
Nicole was nodding as Liz said this and I looked at her for her input.
“We need to talk to people from the other side of this issue. Most Americans support common sense gun reform, so we need to make sure that when we’re talking about this that we’re getting our point across respectfully,” Nicole said.
More Than Baltimore
As the train moved past boarded-up homes in Newark, New Jersey, I remembered how my lunch companions smiled knowingly at each other and told me about one of the things they love most about their work.
Both MPGV and Moms work with survivors of gun violence, and Liz and Nicole both perked up when they talked about this.
“The most rewarding thing for me is working with communities in Baltimore who’ve been adversely affected by gun violence and seeing we’ve helped,” Liz said. She told me how one of the most moving moments for her soon after she got involved in GVP was meeting Alice Oaks. She’d lost both of her sons to gun violence in the span of nine years.
“Meeting her really put a face on the statistics I’d started reading about in Daniel Webster’s book and David Kennedy’s book when I started finding out more about this issue,” Liz said. Webster wrote Reducing Gun Violence In America: Informing Policy With Evidence and Analysis and David Kennedy wrote Reducing Gun Violence: The Boston Gun Project’s Operation Ceasefire.
Nicole said working with survivors was a big reward in her work, too.
“I’m also lucky to work with an incredibly supportive group of people who’ll cry with me on the worst days of this challenging work and celebrate with me on others,” she said.
Liz smiled in gratitude as Nicole said seeing MPGV’s Behind the Statistics program, in which the group highlights individual stories of gun violence survivors was a turning point in her personal GVP advocacy evolution.
Meeting gun violence survivors was a milestone for me, too. At an MPGV Mother’s Day Weekend Baltimore Ceasefire Weekend Blood Drive I met Sharon McMahan, Darlene Cain, and other moms who’d lost children to gun violence. Over the next year, I’d get to know them better. My favorite thing about these women, whom I’ve come to look up to, is how they keep on smiling. At every event we were at together they’re joyous, despite what they’ve been through. This is work they come to with hope, and that gives me hope too.
One of the lovely people Nicole and Liz (and Jen) work with often is local progressive activist Debi Turner Lattimer. Maryland Moms Demand Action Survivor Membership Co-Lead. She gave voice to the forward thinking so common to GVP activism that I’ve come to love.
“The best thing about this work is empowering survivors of gun violence to prevent more gun-related injuries and deaths. We do that by fighting the trend of loose gun laws. We’ve been able to change the culture and change our laws. That makes a difference,” Debi told me in a Facebook Direct Message.
All Aboard
The conductor’s voice came over the PA system, muffled and gravely, that our next stop would be New York’s Penn station. The mom next to me pushed her book and phone into a quilted shoulder bag. She smiled and pointed out to the little one with her a vibrantly colored, two-block-long mural on the side of a brick building. It depicted focused but happy girls playing jump rope. It reminded me of something Nicole had said that afternoon about working in GVP.
“My job is to remind people that we don’t have to live in this dangerous culture of gun violence and that there are meaningful actions they can take to support the movement to end it,” she’d said. As such, Moms is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest GVP organization in the country. As of 2018 it had more than five million supporters and over 350,000 donors in 2017. A great time to become a supporter, Nicole was quick to add, is the group’s Lobby Day. That’ll be on January 31st this year, and you can find out more, readers, by clicking here.
“MPGV and some other activist organizations is meeting with the Community Justice Resource Council soon, too!” Liz said, and I marveled at how much is going on. Liz’s face lit up as she nodded a happy yes.
Doors to the Past
Liz and Jen have both worked at Moms too, moving to MPGV when they wanted to work more on advocacy on behalf of Maryland–especially Baltimore, where more than three hundred people die at the hands of a shooter each year.
“We treat gunshot victims about once every other day,” Dr. Tariq Khan, a physician who works in the Emergency Department at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, told me in an email exchange on the topic. “Stabilizing them and treating them for shock is just the first step in what’s often a long process of recovery for each of them.” Sinai is one of three hospitals within the city limits.
I felt a cold electricity shoot through me as the door to the train car opened mysteriously and momentarily, letting in a gust of air.
“We’re all in this together,” Liz had said to me back at the restaurant as the waitress took our payments. “It’s important to work at both the national and local levels to prevent gun violence.” Nicole nodded in agreement at that. I remembered this as we pulled into Penn Station (New York City) and I thought of how I’d left from Penn Station (Baltimore), too. It made my travels seem like one infinite loop. What happened next gave me an eerie feeling of the ceaseless epidemic of gun violence, too.
The mother and son from Sandy Hook exited the train just as I slung my overnight duffel over my right shoulder. The little one bounded over to a man I assumed was his father who swept him up in an embrace.
“Hey, Bruce!” the man said.
I stumbled a little at that. As regular readers of this site know, that was Colleen’s best friend’s name in high school. He’d taken his own life with a gun, and well over half of gun violence fatalities are suicides, according to the website of one of the leading national GVP organizations, the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence.
“Bruce” is an unusual name these days. It had to be a sign. Either that, or I’ve been married to the Queen of the Supernatural, as I call her teasingly sometimes, Colleen for a really, really long time!
“In either case, that’s how I’ll take it,” I thought as my taxi made its way uptown to Casa Morgenthau.
As corny as it sounds, I vowed to redouble my personal efforts on behalf of gun violence prevention for the children like Bruce. He was looking up at his dad with such love as they ambled down the sidewalk and my taxi driver put a heavy foot on the gas. But it was, as it it is with kids, a dependent love. Our kids are depending on us to act to preserve their lives.
You can contact Liz at liz@mdpgv.org and Nicole at hocomomsdemand@gmail.com.
And even though the names of Marylanders and Moms include–well, those titles–you don’t have to be either to join those groups, Nicole reminded me. You can just want to end gun violence.
Thanks for reading! Check back with us each here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.