Women ... can make a difference in America
This week I read an article about a group called Women For Women and I decided to read up on the group at www.womenforwomen.org , and at a couple of other sites on the internet. This group has neutralized strife, hunger, institutionalized graft, bribery, and so on... to the point where governments have been over-turned, and wholesale change has occurred where people said it could not be... all of them run by men who dominated one another with uncompromising power and guns.
As I watched the advertizing leading up to the Obama Town Hall Meeting that was to be televised this date on CNN (and I write this "was televised"), I thought about what we are up against in America, relative to household gun related deaths, and how it could be changed... or not! A little bit of data never hurt a good argument...
In our country we had in 2013, according to Wikipedia, "84,258 nonfatal injuries; 11,208 deaths by homicide; 21,175 by suicide with a firearm; 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm; and 281 deaths due to firearms-use with "undetermined intent", for a total of 33,169 deaths related to firearms (88 per day)". This data is directly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA. That is a higher rate of death and injury per day than in Vietnam (11), Korea (45), American Revolution (11) and any other American conflict other than WWI, WWII and the Civil War.
When America fought in Vietnam and Korea there were masses of people in the American city streets rallying against the wars... and they overcame tremendous testosterone power in the male dominated governments that waged the wars... the protesters, many of them women, were upset at just 11 deaths per day! On the streets and in the homes of America today we have about 88 people killed by guns per day... why has this not caused a similar hue-and-cry to that of the 70's.
An example of the impact of this violence is as follows... In 2013, 19.3 people per 100,000 died in Louisiana, because of a firearms-related injury for every 100,000 people in the state. That rate is equivalent to 14.7 people dying at a single New Orleans Saints football game (where the stadium seats roughly 76,000) This data is from The Guardian, US Edition, October 15th, 2015. That tragedy would get national attention during the Saints football game, but not a blink of an eye spread over the year.
After reading the website of Women For Women I began to wonder if it is the lack of women in our congress and the White House over the years that has allowed us to get to the stage where we have 350 million guns in America, and billions of rounds of ammunition. While it might be a bit of a stretch, I am not so sure. What the Women For Women movement has proven, is that in countries that were far more testosterone driven than America, through their activities, change occurred. Where are Jane Fonda and Joan Baez when we need them
It is worth thinking about as we get together to vote this year... not just for the president, but for every seat in congress and legislatures, there needs to be a litmus test... do the candidates have balls enough to compromise, if not, vote for those who don't have them.
As I watched the advertizing leading up to the Obama Town Hall Meeting that was to be televised this date on CNN (and I write this "was televised"), I thought about what we are up against in America, relative to household gun related deaths, and how it could be changed... or not! A little bit of data never hurt a good argument...
In our country we had in 2013, according to Wikipedia, "84,258 nonfatal injuries; 11,208 deaths by homicide; 21,175 by suicide with a firearm; 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm; and 281 deaths due to firearms-use with "undetermined intent", for a total of 33,169 deaths related to firearms (88 per day)". This data is directly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA. That is a higher rate of death and injury per day than in Vietnam (11), Korea (45), American Revolution (11) and any other American conflict other than WWI, WWII and the Civil War.
When America fought in Vietnam and Korea there were masses of people in the American city streets rallying against the wars... and they overcame tremendous testosterone power in the male dominated governments that waged the wars... the protesters, many of them women, were upset at just 11 deaths per day! On the streets and in the homes of America today we have about 88 people killed by guns per day... why has this not caused a similar hue-and-cry to that of the 70's.
An example of the impact of this violence is as follows... In 2013, 19.3 people per 100,000 died in Louisiana, because of a firearms-related injury for every 100,000 people in the state. That rate is equivalent to 14.7 people dying at a single New Orleans Saints football game (where the stadium seats roughly 76,000) This data is from The Guardian, US Edition, October 15th, 2015. That tragedy would get national attention during the Saints football game, but not a blink of an eye spread over the year.
After reading the website of Women For Women I began to wonder if it is the lack of women in our congress and the White House over the years that has allowed us to get to the stage where we have 350 million guns in America, and billions of rounds of ammunition. While it might be a bit of a stretch, I am not so sure. What the Women For Women movement has proven, is that in countries that were far more testosterone driven than America, through their activities, change occurred. Where are Jane Fonda and Joan Baez when we need them
It is worth thinking about as we get together to vote this year... not just for the president, but for every seat in congress and legislatures, there needs to be a litmus test... do the candidates have balls enough to compromise, if not, vote for those who don't have them.
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