Last Wednesday, I was at Newark airport waiting to board my flight home. My flight was delayed so I was sitting at one of the bars near the gate, sipping a soda and reading emails on my phone. Without warning, the fire alarm goes off. I swear my heart stopped for a millisecond. I looked up, scared and frazzled. No one was moving. No one seemed concerned. I was off my chair and ready to evacuate the building.
Luckily, a few seconds later the alarm stopped. A man who was sitting across from me said something to the effect of "It's OK, someone just went through a door they shouldn't have." Excuse me? At one of the busiest international airports in the country, someone went through a door they shouldn't have and no one is concerned?
Fear. Raw, unbridled fear. That's what I felt when the alarm went off. That's what I feel every time I'm in an airport. I've been flying fairly regularly recently and every time I'm on a plane, I can't rid myself of the thought that we might blow up or crash into a building. Every single time anyone gets up to go to the bathroom, I become uneasy. It doesn't matter what sex they are, what race they are, how old they are. Indoctrination is not something that any of us are immune to. Threats come in all shapes and sizes.
I use the example of the airport and my personal (irrational) fear of flying as an example of the fear I have every time I open my email, check social media and leave my house. This week's events has just about annihilated me.
The violence has to stop.
We need to make this country safe for everyone, especially those who are marginalized and discriminated against. Whether they are black, Latino, gay, transgender, or any other minority group, they deserve to be safe. They deserve to be treated equally with those of us (like myself) who are more privileged. Black lives do matter. LGBTTQQIAAP lives do matter. Every life matters, of course, but when we live in a world where you're more likely to be gunned down because you're black and stopped by a police officer or gay and spending the night out at a club, it becomes necessary to acknowledge that some lives (black lives, LGBTTQQIAAP lives) have to be supported and represented more right now because they are the ones in danger.
We need to train our officers better. We need to do more to educate them about proper procedure. We need to find the bad officers in every precinct and we need to get rid of them. We need to punish the officers who have needlessly ended the lives of innocent men and women. We also need to respect our law enforcement officers and understand that the majority of policemen and policewomen do their job with integrity and respect.
We need to pass laws that make our country safer. We need to regulate gun purchases. We need to limit the type of guns people can buy. No one should be able to purchase an assault rifle. We need to do legitimate background checks and we need to make sure we enforce waiting periods. Anyone who needs to buy a gun right now and walk away with it right now should not be allowed to buy one.
We need to elect people to office who are worthy of the position. As of this moment, we have a man and a woman, one of whom is poised to take the title of President of the United States of America in January of 2017. He is definitely not worthy of that title. She isn't either. When the choice is between a racist, elitist, idiotic, uneducated and conceited man and a woman who is undoubtedly corrupt, the United States is the loser. Whoever we get in January is unworthy of leading our nation.
Systemic failure. It all comes down to systemic failure. Each of our institutions has failed. Each of us has failed. I have failed because I haven't done more. That stops now. I pledge to start doing more to promote true equality. I hope everyone who reads this can pledge to do the same. I hope that by doing so, we can end the violence, work towards making our country a better place for all who live here, and end the fear I have every day, waiting for the next tragedy to occur.
