#WearingOrange Was A Turning Point

Last night, when I was laying in shavasana at my yoga class, I couldn’t focus on clearing my mind. I knew why; the day had been packed with actions on and off line in conjunction with the first-ever National Gun Violence Awareness Day. The country was #wearingorange all day, and to be honest, I didn’t expect it to happen to the scale to which it did.

“This is it,” I told myself. My eyes were wide open and heart pounding… clearly failing at shavasana this time around. “This is the moment, the feeling, I’ve been waiting for.”

It’s been two and a half years since the shooting at Sandy Hook, my former elementary school and the workplace of my mother. She survived 12/14, but there is no denying that it forever changed our lives. I joined the gun violence prevention movement almost immediately after, first as a way to cope with the pain and aftermath, then as a way to continue to live. We are told by everyone that it was over after the background checks bill failed in Congress the following April, and too many Americans believed them. We are told that Sandy Hook changed nothing, and in every ensuing interview and conversation to this day, one of the first questions to be asked is , “How does it feel that nothing has changed after Sandy Hook?” We are told to give up, that this is an impossible fight.

But a coalition of organizations and a network of relentless survivors, family members of victims, and activists who carry the burden of gun violence second-hand decide to keep pushing. The trolls, the threats, the bills that fail, the ones that pass and cause more pain, the fatalistic media, the lack of Congressional momentum. So many deterrents, so many reasons to give up to ease our pain of reliving our tragedies and battling gun violence in America. There are small moments in activism (and some big ones) which call for celebration, and a rule of organizing is that you cannot take those moments for granted. We forget to take the fresh breath of air when we win, and the reason is because there is so much work to be done. It seems like unfinished business when we celebrate small victories, yet it is absolutely a necessary ingredient in self-care of ourselves and the movement.

So let’s examine yesterday.

Dozens of organizations and partners, gun violence-related and not. Hundreds of thousands of tweets. Top Twitter trend nationwide for hours, and worldwide for a bit, too. Countless brave activists and supports. Millions of orange clothing items. President Obama, Jason Bateman, Julianne Moore, Melissa Joan Hart, Sandy Hook School teachers, Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin, Padma Lakshmi, the NY Mets, Michael J. Fox, Russell Simmons, Billy Ray Cyrus, Susan Sarandon, Randi Weingarten, Cosmo Magazine, MTV, Motown Records, Lisa Bloom, Michael Stipe, REM, Perez Hilton, BET Network, Lawrence O’Donnell, Katie Couric, Arne Duncan, Aasif Mandvi, Piers Morgan, Talib Kweli, Lil Durk, Alyssa Milano, medical groups, members of Congress, state legislators, prosecutors and mayors, survivors, family members… the list goes on.

And perhaps what is most incredible about #WearingOrange and National Gun Violence Awareness Day is that its success was the result of groundwork organizing and coalition-building, and organic growth. These celebrities accepted with pride and ownership the request to join in, and as it began trending, more elected officials and celebrities and “average Americans” joined in.

That signals that this is truly a culture war (and we’re finally winning). That is what change looks like. That is what a movement looks like.

Hadiya Pendleton’s friends and their organization Project Orange Tree began this idea and built it from the ground up, with the help of Everytown and dozens of other groups. They know the power of love, peace, young peoples’ voices, and bridge-building. This was hands down the most… together a gun violence prevention action has been in my experience, and I’m not one bit surprised that it was one started by young people. America turned orange in honor of those we have lost to gun violence, but also in celebration of the lives we are going to save. This was only the first National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Imagine next year.

I experienced #NGVAD in-person, too. I was able to attend a hearing in Congress on the intersection of domestic violence and guns, and the ways in which policy can solve these issues. One of the witnesses, Lisette Johnson, said, “The gift my unlikely survival gave me was the determination to do something to make change… to use this knowledge and experience to create different, better outcomes for my family and for all Americans.” She said, “There is no such thing as returning to ‘normal life’ after gun violence,” so we must change ourselves and speak louder than we would have before. “Not to do something is to condone these acts of violence.”

I will never forget Lisette’s testimony because she put into words the exact way I have felt for the last two and a half years. Even though I am the daughter of a mass shooting survivor and she is a direct survivor of domestic violence with a gun, our outlook on our experiences with gun violence were exactly the same. We are fighters, no different from the fighters at the March on Washington for Gun Control a month after 12/14, where I was pulled onto the stage at the rally. I sat and watched and listened in a haze of shock, overcome with mixed emotions. I didn’t know then, but the people on that stage with me and the people in the crowd would become my family, my support system, my life line. Sitting on that stage, and so many times since, I just longed for a moment where I could definitively say, “Yes, this terrible, terrible thing happened and we acted in its memory and we won. And now the next generations will never need to know what bullet proof vests or active shooter drills are.”

Laying in shavasana, I began to cry. “This is it. Today was it. This is what I pictured, sitting on that stage. It’s the feeling I wanted: to know in the depths of my heart that we are at a turning point and change will happen.” There is no doubt that we will have countless more battles, that we will lose many, that we will win more, that many tragedies will happen, that thousands of names will be added to the list of people we will be #wearingorange for each year.

But we won’t give up; that’s not what we do.

My yoga teacher spoke again: “Begin to open your eyes now, and stay here for a few more seconds. I really want you to pay attention to your body in this moment. Feel your inner strength. And remember this feeling for any moment you doubt yourself or are not here on your mat. Remember your inner strength.”

On any other day, that might have sounded like cliche yoga-talk to me. But on June 2nd, tired from a long day of hashtag activism, donning my “WEAR ORANGE” shirt, I knew — and know — that it was another sign.

To all who were #wearingorange yesterday, remember your inner strength. Onward…