Running for office as a woman

I waited until after election day to write this post for a very specific reason. The unconscious bias I encountered while campaigning (and I do believe most of it was unconscious) is a lot of things but it is not a reason to vote for me.

I wanted to people to vote for me for one reason and one reason only - they thought I would do a good job. 

Election Day has now come and gone. So, I can share what I encountered without worrying about whether or not it would affect someone's decision to vote for me. I hope that in sharing people will have a better understanding of what women encounter when running for office, will think carefully about their own unconscious biases, and will encourage and support any women in their own lives who want to run. 

As most of you know, I knocked on over 5,000 doors during my campaign for Paducah City Commission. I did almost all of my knocking alone and during the day while my children were in school. One any given day a little over half of the doors I'd knock on would be opened and I'd get to have an actual conversation, instead of hanging my door hanger and moving on to the next house. 

Here are some of the comments I got that I'm guessing my male opponents didn't: Are you married? What does your husband do? These comments came from both men and women. I often got asked if I had children, which didn't bother me. What did bother me is that several people - again men and women - openly questioned how I would have time to be a city commissioner (a part-time position) while raising three young children.

The current governor of Kentucky Matt Bevin has NINE children - the oldest of which was born in 2003. Do you think anyone worries about how he'll do his job or asks him how he'll take care of his children? I'm guessing not. 

Now, when one runs for public office, you are opening yourself up to questions about your personal life but often these questions didn't feel like curiosity. They felt like judgment. They felt like people were trying to figure out why a young woman was doing something not a lot of young women do - run for office. It felt like they were trying to place me within the traditional roles for women and make sure that I wasn't straying too far outside of those.

I also got a lot of comments on my appearance.

Some were negative. I had three men look at the picture on my door hanger - a picture where I am coiffed, groomed, and photoshopped - then look at me as I stood in front of them sweaty from knocking on doors all day and ask, "You sure this is you?"

I laughed it off but it stung every time. It stung not because they were insulting me but because of all the things they could have asked me or talked to me about regarding my campaign they chose to take a cheap shot about my looks and reduce our interaction to one about my appearance.

I also got a fair amount of compliments on my appearance. I had men tell me I was gorgeous and ask me how old I was. I had men tell me my photo didn't do me justice. I had several men mistake my politeness for permission to touch me. Several gave me side-hugs. 

Every time I was by myself and every time I felt like I had no choice but to smile and acquiesce. 

I know a compliment on your appearance always seems like a good thing. We all want to hear we look nice, but running for public service is serious and important. I am asking people to trust me with their tax dollars, their safety, the future of their community. I am asking for their vote and how I look is completely irrelevant. Again, I think it's safe to assume my male opponents didn't receive many comments on their appearance.

Towards the end of the campaign, someone wrote a letter-to-the-editor to our local paper warning people not to vote for me or another woman who was running for mayor. The letter argued that we were "stealth" and "devious" and hiding our true political motives in running for office.

Both my race and the mayoral race was nonpartisan. However, I was still open and honest about my partisan leanings and told anyone who asked what party I belonged to. So, first and foremost, the attack was wholly inaccurate. However, I also believe that letter and a letter posted publicly at party headquarters were gendered. The letter posted publicly also accused of us being "stealth" and hiding our real ideas. 

Forbes recently interviewed some of the world's most powerful women and asked the stereotype they hated the most. 

Conniving was in the top ten.

The idea is that women can't rise to positions of power on their own merit - women only rise because other people are grooming them (as the letter also claimed about me), because they are deceiving people, because they don't really belong here and they must be lying about who they are or what they represent in order to succeed. 

It is incredibly upsetting and insulting. 

Now, in full disclosure, there are also benefits of being a woman running for office. No one seemed to feel threatened or fearful when they saw me knocking on their doors. I had a male friend tell me to make sure and always take several steps back from the door after knocking. However, I almost never did and no one seemed to care. As a woman, no one saw me as a physical threat. 

No one was openly rude or hostile to me because of my gender and I want to emphasize that the VAST majority of my interactions were amazingly positive and productive.

And every time the door opened and a little girl was standing there with wide eyes, every time I got to explain to her why I was there and what I was doing, every time she smiled back made every crappy thing people said to me worth it.

Still, making the decision to run for office is difficult for anyone, especially women. Running for office is psychologically and physically taxing. The voices that tell women they can't do it are loud - whether they are coming from within our own heads or from a voter. 

I guess all I'm asking is that the other voices be louder. If you know a woman who should run for office, encourage her. If you know a woman running for office, support her. If you hear someone commenting on a female politician's appearance, shut it down. Donate to organizations that support and train women running for office. 

Not because women are better or deserve special treatment, but - in the words of a pretty famous male politician - "when everybody is equal, we are all more free."

Exit the Echo Chamber: Bipartisanship As An Act of Faith

Photo Credit: chrisinplymouth via Compfight cc

Twice a week, I co-host a political podcast with a Republican. I’m a Democrat. This means that twice a week I sit down and engage in political debate with someone who feels very differently than I do on a great many issues.

We start each show the same.

“No shouting. No insults. Plenty of nuance.”

Willingly volunteering for political confrontation is most people’s worst nightmares. It’s certainly my mother’s worst nightmare but I do it willingly because I believe we desperately need more civil discourse in the world. I believe that if we can’t discuss – even debate – the things we feel most passionately about then we are destined to fall for the siren song of rightness ringing in our own ears.

It is a not so subtle act of faith to sit down across from someone who feels differently than you and say, “Tell me why you feel that way.”

As with almost any act of faith, this one has made me a better person.

To engage with someone who disagrees with you is to accept that maybe – just maybe – you could be wrong. To engage with someone who disagrees with you is to take the scraps of thought in your own mind and attempt to quilt them into something that someone else could possibly recognize. To engage with someone who disagrees with you is to recognize that you can’t see it all, understand it all, or solve it all alone. To engage with someone who disagrees with you is to open yourself up to rejection, misunderstanding, and hurt… sometimes at your own hands.

To engage on any level is to be vulnerable. To engage about politics is to be vulnerable far beyond the personal–it is vulnerability on an almost global level. What if what I think about violence is wrong? What if I what I think about the other party, the other president, another country is wrong?

Read the rest of my guest post on Irreverin. 

Donald & Hillary: My trips to the conventions

The balloon drop at the RNC

First up, I went to see Donald Trump in Cleveland. Beth and I got last minute credentials for the final evening of the Republican National Committee's Convention and decided to make the trip. Wednesday night I left Paducah late hoping to arrive at Beth's house in Cincinnati by 9pm and then wake up early to drive the rest of the way to Cleveland.

The universe had other plans and I was waylaid by a nail in my tire in Elizabethtown. I didn't arrive at Beth's house until almost midnight.  

Early the next morning, we set out for Cleveland and got to the Quicken Loans Arena a little after lunch. We were a little underwhelmed by the crowds. We saw our fair share of vendors hocking every offensive Hillary Clinton pin your heart could desire and a few random protestors but no raucous marches or seething masses. 

The line of police officers at the RNC

The convention didn't gavel in until 7:30pm so we spent most of the checking out the media tent and marketplace and interviewing some delegates. We left the area for dinner and when we came back, we had to walk through a football field's worth of police officers shoulder to shoulder. It was intense and a little disturbing. It is the most vivid memory I have from the RNC and we captured it on Facebook Live. 

Once the session began, there were fourteen speakers from CEOs to celebrities to Ivanka and Donald Trump. (I wouldn't realize how out of the ordinary that was until we go to the DNC). Ivanka did a good job, although I didn't particularly believe her assertions that her father was really going to stick up for women. 

We had gotten an advance copy of Donald Trump's speech that had been released to the press and Beth and I both were shocked by the dark and foreboding overall tone. I figured at the time that was because he was incapable of sticking to the script and that they at least wanted the message out there. From where we sat, we could see the prompter though and he only went off and ad-libbed a couple of times.

I won't get in to my thoughts on the speech itself, which I found bizarre and threatening. What I found most interesting were the reactions of the crowd. They couldn't quite get their footing. Half the crowd would stand and cheer at one point and the other half would stand and cheer at another. It was very interesting to watch as a person who has gone to party events and knows how partisans react when all the same page.

This crowd was decidedly not on the same page - unless that page was hating Hillary Clinton which always got the loudest and most consistent reaction.

The speech was long and we drove through the night to get back to Cincinnati. I got into bed at 5am and woke up three hours later to drive back to Paducah. I was completely exhausted so it took me a couple of days to process what we saw. 

Mainly, I left realizing that the GOP has desperately lost its way. Beyond the fact that the crowd was much smaller, I just kept looking around thinking "This isn't conservatism." The party I saw at that convention doesn't represent the smart, thoughtful, gracious conservatives I interact with every day in my hometown and it certainly doesn't represent my amazing co-host on Pantsuit Politics. 

If conventions are a four day commercial for a political party and its candidate, then I wasn't buying what they were selling.

By the next week, I was more than ready to head to Philadelphia.

Now, in fairness, we spent three whole days at the Democratic National Convention. Also, because of my connections from my DC days, there were concerts and fun meals and we even had time to try floating (a post for another time!). However, once we'd experienced a few days of the DNC we quickly realized how odd the RNC really was.

First, trending twitter hashtags aside (seriously, #showmeyourcrowd people you are wearing me out!) there were easily a third more people at the DNC if not more. We regularly found ourselves in a crush of people. Every single night people perched on stairs because there were no seats. By the final night, people were lining the hallways desperate for a seat.

There were empty seats the final night of the RNC - not a ton but there were.

Second, the programs were VASTLY different. The DNC gaveled in every night at 4:30pm - a full three hours before the RNC. There were SIXTY-FOUR speakers the final night of the DNC.

64 v. 14

There was your fair share of elected officials and celebrities but there were A LOT of everyday Americans sharing everyday stories of how a certain issue had affected them or how Hillary Clinton had helped them in their time of need. Perhaps most striking were the victims of gun violence who stated plainly they didn't want to be up there talking but that this is how they chose to honor the memory of their loved ones.

The balloon drop at the DNC

It was powerful stuff. If we weren't crying over an emotional story, we were having a love fest. This was the other huge difference between the two events. The RNC was only unified in what they were against - immigration, trade, terrorism, crime, Hillary. Whereas at the DNC, there was much more focus on what the party stood FOR - equality, diversity, the middle class.

The night Obama spoke - which felt like the most intense going away party in history - we literally held hands and sang "What the World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love." There were consistent protests from a small contingent of Bernie or Bust people every night but the crowd usually chanted over them and I never saw any physical altercations.

Lastly, the sheer event production at the DNC was leaps and bounds above the RNC. The band was better at moving the (very long) program along. Every night had its own narratives that the speakers built on and it all built to the final evening. The video content was well-produced and there was a lot of it. 

And THE SIGNS. Lord, the signs.

For every primetime speaker, arena volunteers would pass out signs themed to them or their speech. Obama signs for Obama. Joe signs for Joe Biden. And not just one sign - MULTIPLE signs per speech. It got to the point where I would have a pile in my lap. If I heard an applicable catchphrase, I would literally hold up my finger and say "Hold on! I have a sign for that!" as I desperately flipped through my stack.

There were no signs at the RNC.

That might sound silly but not only do the signs make an impact on television. They are a fantastic souvenir for your party faithful's filling the arena. So, not having them speaks volumes to the event preparation and forethought. Now, there was a card STUNT at the end that didn't go smoothly but hey you can't win them all. 

As most of you know, Hillary Clinton gave her acceptance speech on July 28th, my 35th birthday. I sat behind her in 2008 when she gave her concession speech so to be in the crowd the night she finally shattered that glass ceiling was an incredibly powerful moment for me - one that is still incredibly difficult for me to put into words.

Hillary Clinton has been an essential part of my entire political life. She was the First Lady when I first became aware of politicals - largely a bystander like myself. She ran for Senate as I was entering college and pushing my own political beliefs farther. She ran for president and my first job out of law school was working for her campaign.

And now here we are again - she's become the first female nominee of a major political party and I'm running for office myself. On May 17th, I filled in a box next to her name then moved down the ballot and filled in the box next to my own. I'll do it again on November 8th. 

I wasn't sure I would live to see that moment. I certainly wasn't sure it would ever be her. I wasn't sure I would ever run either. 

To get to attend both party conventions was an amazing experience, but to be in that room with her on that day wasn't just historical - it was life affirming. 

Campaign Update: March

Photo by Rachael House Photography.

"How's the campaign going?"

It's the question I get most often. It's also the question I'm never quite sure how to answer.

Good? ... Great! ... Your guess is as good as mine. ... We'll see May 17th!

The truth - I suppose - all depends on what you're measuring. 

If you're measuring fundraising,  things are going well. I've raised about 30% of my fundraising goal. I'm not exactly where I wanted to be but, then again, I wanted to be at 100% by the first month and that was probably a little unrealistic.

Ok, a lot unrealistic.

I have two fundraisers coming up in April and not a ton of expenditures until then. So, overall, I feel like I'm doing fine. I always thought fundraising came easy to me and it does - when it's for other people. It's much harder to ask for money for yourself!

Speaking of... in case you want to get me closer to 50% of my goal, here you go:

Donate

If you're measuring voter outreach, things are also going well. I've started knocking on doors and have been met with lots of kindness in support. I also have amazing family and friends that are knocking on doors around Paducah, which is also fantastic. I've spoken at several groups and have done community outreach. I've also begun advertising in local magazines and on Facebook.

Again, I think my expectations with regards to how much I could get accomplished in the first month were a smidge high. I'm trying to recognize any progress as good and not be too hard on myself.

If you're measuring the candidate's mental state, then it just depends on the day! Some days I'm so energized by the conversations I'm having with people who care so deeply about Paducah's future. Some days I feel like everything is such an uphill battle.

Campaigning is hard because you always feel like there's more you could be doing. Or - even worse - you see an opponent out there doing it. I'm beginning to realize what a mind game this entire exercise really is. 

You're constantly weighing your actions and words against your opponents and the desires of the voters and the reality of the situation and the concerns of your own family and friends. I find myself - despite my best efforts - second guessing myself and worrying that everything I do or say will upset someone.

Then, I remember.

It probably will and that's ok.

I'm not running for City Commission to make everyone like me (although campaigning can feel like that sometimes). I'm running because I love this town and I want what's best for it and I believe I am uniquely qualified to make that happen.

And I would have needed to learn (and relearn) that lesson even if I had raised a million dollars in February and knocked on every door in town.

So, let's try this again.

How's the campaign going?

It's GOING. I'm raising money. I'm knocking on doors. And I'm learning that being a candidate is so much more than those two things. 

My big announcement and how it affects this blog

So, in case you missed it...

Today I'm excited to announce my candidacy for Paducah City Commission! This town is ready for the next generation of...

Posted by Sarah Stewart Holland on Monday, January 25, 2016

I had a big day yesterday! I filed to run for Paducah City Commission and announced my candidacy on Facebook. I was so overwhelmed by all the support I received and I wanted to make sure and share this big next step with all of you.

I've thought a lot about this blog (and Pantsuit Politics) as I got close to announcing my candidacy. The traditional advice is to clean up your Facebook and other social media platforms. Remove offensive posts. Take down anything that could anger a voter. When I recently wrote this post, many of my friends who knew I was considering a run for office questioned my timing... and maybe my judgment. 

But here's the thing.

I've lived my life online since 2011. I've written a lot about a lot of things from parenting philosophies to politics to religion to my marriage. I couldn't take it all down even if I wanted to and - the truth is - I don't want to. 

I want to be a politician. I suppose I already am. But that's not ALL I am. I'm also a mother with thoughts on sleep-training and a wife with thoughts on therapy and a citizen with thoughts on gun control and a church goer with thoughts on faith.

I am all those things and the sooner we allow politicians to be complex people with complex beliefs the better off we all will be.

So, the answer to how my candidacy will affect this blog is - it won't, except hopefully it will teach me all kinds of lessons I can share.  I'm still going to come here and be honest and be vulnerable. I'm still going to go on Pantsuit Politics and be "Sarah Holland from the left."

If something I say means someone won't vote for me, then so be it.

Come November 7th I hope to be Paducah's next City Commissioner, but it will be a shallow victory if I don't recognize the person I became to get there. 

I'm counting on all of you to keep me honest and to keep me real. Win or lose it's going to be a heck of a journey!

If you want to get involved with my campaign or make a donation, check out my campaign website!

Why I'm raising my sons like daughters

Gloria Steinem recently posted her Christmas wish list. The list is fantastic, but one item really spoke to me as the mom of three boys. 

“I’m glad we’ve begun to raise our daughters more like our sons – but it will never work until we raise our sons more like our daughters.”

The societal expectations placed upon little girls are far from perfect. Women are expected to beautiful and nice and never, ever bossy. However, we’ve come a very, very long way from the 1950’s when getting married and raising a family were the only real life goals presented to women.

I was raised to believe I could be whatever I wanted. I was praised for having big dreams in the traditionally male-dominated worlds of law and politics. 

The same is not true of little boys today.

Little boys are taught that certain dreams are off limits. Little boys are taught in a million ways that they can do whatever they want - as long as it’s not for girls. 

Amos loves nail polish but won’t wear it anymore because people (adults and children) have told him it’s for girls. Griffin loved My Little Ponies until he got the message that that show was for girls. I hear well-educated people tell me ALL THE TIME they wouldn’t let their son wear a certain shirt or participate in a certain activity because it was “girly.” 

Girly meaning bad. Girly meaning undesirable. Girly meaning less than.

This attitude is harmful not just to the little boys being subtly told that who they are and what they enjoy is not ok, BUT also to the little girls being subtly told that who they are and what they enjoy isn’t good enough for boys. 

I recently heard Anne-Marie Slaughter of Why Women Can’t Have It All fame on Freakonomics radio and I thought her insight into this issue was spot on.

“So here’s what I realized: I have two sons, and I looked at my sons and I thought, “You know, if I’d had a daughter we’d be raising her 100 percent differently than the way my mother was raised, and even differently than I was raised,” although my father was very progressive and he raised me to have a career. But if I looked at my sons, I thought, “I’m raising my sons pretty much exactly the way my father was raised.” I mean, we’re raising them to have a more active role as fathers. My father never changed a diaper. Certainly my husband changed plenty. And I expect my sons to. But we’re still saying to men, “Your worth in society is a function of your breadwinning. It’s a function of how much money you can make and how high you can rise in your career.” And that is a very limited set of choices. It’s the flip side of saying to women, when my mother was raised you know, “Your worth in society depends on can you get married and can you have children.” And my point is all of us should have access to both. As a woman I absolutely want to be able to compete. I want to have a career. That’s been fabulous. But I sure don’t want to do that at the expense of also being a mother and a wife and a sister and a daughter. And so, what I now say to my sons is, “If you believe in equality and you marry a woman or a man, whatever, and you believe that you’re going to support that woman’s career, then it may require you being the lead parent and your spouse to be the lead breadwinner.” And that’s been the situation in our marriage. And they understand that I couldn’t have a big career unless Andy played that role. So that’s the place where I’m really saying to men, if you believe in equality, it can’t be, “Okay, I believe in equality but I’m going to take every promotion I get, and if you get a promotion, I’m not going to move for you.”

— Anne-Marie Slaughter

When we tell little boys "girly" things are off limits, we're not just limiting the toys they can play with we are limiting the very path to their own self-determination and happiness. 

We have to raise little boys to believe that nurturing and primary caregiving are just as valuable as ambition and primary breadwinning. We have to teach them the only choice that has real value is the choice that will bring them personal fulfillment. 

It's hard. It's hard to undo what we've been taught. It's hard to look at our own choices and wonder whether we would have taken a different path had it been open for us. It's hard because raising children has as much to do with ourselves as it does with our kids.

But we have to try. Let your son paint his nails. Let your daughter cut her hair off. Tell your son he'll be a great father one day. Tell your daughter she'll be a great boss. We have to allow ourselves to be uncomfortable when our children push against societal expectations - even if they'll get teased. 

People tell me often I'm setting my children up to get teased. First of all, I haven't met a person yet who escaped childhood without confronting the cruelty of their peers. I prefer to teach my children to deal with teasing - not avoid it all costs. Second of all, I don't want to teach my children that they should alter their behavior based on the opinions of others. 

In an interview recently, Gloria Steinem said, "I hope that we will one day change society to fit the unique individual, not the unique individual to fit society, but we all are in this place, and we're all trying to find our own solutions, and we need to support each other in those solutions."

That's on my wishlist - for myself, for everyone, and ESPECIALLY for my boys.

I love my boys. I love every little thing that makes them uniquely them.

They can be whatever they want to be ... even girly. 

Why arguing about guns on Facebook made me more patriotic

I’ve been arguing about guns on Facebook for basically 48 hours straight.

What I’ve noticed is that after all the statistics and info graphs - after all the stories and anecdotes and emotions - the two sides seem to represent two world views.

Pro gun control: I believe the government can do something that will improve the situation and I want to try. The world is scary and I want laws to help make it less so.

Anti gun control: I do not believe the government can do anything to help and will most likely make it worse. I feel unsafe as well but government interference makes me feel even less so and I’d rather just defend myself.

Look. Both sides are valid. Both sides are little bit right. After all, government is just a reflection of ourselves - both our best AND our worst. Government can’t fix everything, but it’s not going to ruin everything either.

What I’ve also heard a lot from some of those opposed to legislation is that our country is getting worse and there’s nothing we can do about it. That America is some sort of lost cause. 

Now, THAT I do not agree with.

Are there real challenges and truly scary problems? Yes.

But I believe in the great American experiment. I believe I drink from a well I did not dig and that it is my duty and moral obligation to keep digging.

I just finished Sarah Vowell’s Lafayette in the Somewhat United States about the Revolutionary War and I'm sure Washington's barefoot soldiers wondered about the impact of marching line by line into the British army’s bayonets. I'm sure the abolitionist thought things were pretty dire in the face of an entire economy built on slavery. I'm sure Alice Paul felt despondent about the state of affairs when she was being force fed raw eggs. I'm sure the protestors on the bridge in Selma wondered if things were really going to change - if what they were doing was really going to make a difference. 

BUT IT DID.

I believe in us. I believe that we can figure this out and it won’t be easy and it won’t be perfect but it will be something.

We will disagree. We will argue. That after all is the real brilliance of this great experiment. 

One of my favorite parts of the Sarah Vowell’s book is the observation that it was the patriots ability to sit around and argue that basically led to the Revolution.

“Arendt suggests that the American colonists revolted ‘not because of any specifically revolutionary or rebellious spirit but because the inhabitants of the colonies’ benefited from - and here she cites John Adams - ‘ ‘the right to to assemble… in their town halls, there to deliberate upon the public affairs.’ ‘ The colonists, Arendt continues, ‘went to the town assemblies, as their representatives later were to go to the famous Conventions, neither exclusively because of duty nor, and even less, to serve their own interests but most of all because they enjoyed discussions, the deliberations, and the making of decisions.”

I’ve enjoyed the discussions and the deliberations in our virtual town hall. Sure, one person was mean but everyone else was thoughtful and insightful and civil and earnest - even with disagreeing passionately with me. 

But the discussion and deliberation can’t be the end of it.

We’re Americans. We act. 

We debate. We deliberate. One side backs down. The other side backs down. We reach a consensus and then we act. If that doesn’t work, we start all over again.

But we don’t give up. We don’t throw our hands in the air and surrender to problems seemingly too big to address. 

This is America. There is no such thing.

Over 500,000 people have been killed by a gun since Heath

Eighteen years ago, Michael Carneal came to my high school with two shotguns, two .22 rifles wrapped and a loaded pistol in his backpack. He then used the pistol to shoot and kill three of my classmates and injure five more. 

I've written before about my what happened to me that day.

When I think back to that day, I feel an immense amount of sadness. When I think of every day since that day, I feel an immense amount of rage. 

Since December 1, 1997, 331 people have died in a mass shooting in the United States. 

That's defining a mass shooting as the murder of more than four people - which wouldn't even have included Heath.

If you expand that definition to every life lost by an act of gun violence be it murder, suicide, accidental deaths, police intervention, or where the intent is unknown that number balloons to 31,537 people .... YEAR.

That means in the 18 years since my life was changed by gun violence 567,000 people have lost their lives and millions more have been forever changed. 

Over 50,000 of those who lost their lives were children.

HALF A MILLION PEOPLE. 50,000 kids. 

Those numbers are overwhelming. The violence is overwhelming. But we have to stop being overwhelmed.

We tiptoe around gun control. We argue that common sense gun control is all we need to make a difference and - believe me - I'm not arguing against the criminalization of assault weapons or closing the gun show loophole or even better mental health screening.

But the fact remains that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators and making changes at the margins is not going to put a dent in our country's gun problem. 

Our problem is WE HAVE TOO MANY GUNS.

More guns = more homicides.

More guns = more suicides. 

More guns = more death.

Somewhere along the way we have decided as a society that a person has the right to own as many guns as they want and, as a result, people have died. 

Now, if you believe that the loss of life is worth it. Fine. Then, let's have that debate, but I'm done pretending that 30,000 lives a year is the cost of being an American. I'm done pretending that more guns make us safer. I'm done pretending that one person's right to bear as many and whatever arms they want is more important than my right to the same level of safety enjoyed by people in other countries.

I'm done feeling my stomach drop when I hear of another damn shooting. I'm done with the prayers and the candles and the vigils. 

I just want to scream, "If you cared what happened to me and my classmates 18 years ago, THEN WHY HAVEN'T YOU DONE ANYTHING TO KEEP IT FROM HAPPENENING AGAIN!!!"

I want gun licensing. I want a gun registry. I want a mandatory gun buyback program that takes 20% of the guns off the street and destroys them.

I want big solutions that speak to the enormity of the suffering inflicted by gun violence.

And every year another December 1st rolls around and I look back on another year filled with shootings and death the madder I get.