The loss of Newtown's innocents ... the world mourns.

My heart goes out to the people of Newtown. I cannot imagine the horror they are experiencing right now, the waking up and remembering that their little ones are gone. There really are no words to describe how every right minded person feels about this senseless massacre.

As someone who works in a school with children of a similar age, I cannot help but imagine myself and the children I work with in that same situation. It is almost too much to think about and it makes me appreciate even more the selfless bravery of those members of staff in Newtown who did all they could to protect their young charges.

There are two trains of thought that seem to be emerging in all this awfulness - the people who cry out for gun reform in the U.S and the people who discuss the fall out of mental illness. At the weekend I read this very moving and really rather frightening post by The Anarchist Soccer Mom . My heart goes out to her and her situation. It is a post well worth reading and gives a new viewpoint to this tragedy.

She describes her own son's struggles with mental illness and the effect his behaviour has on her and his siblings. The frightening thing is that until he commits an act serious enough to be charged there is not much to be done to keep him in check. And there we are faced with the conundrum ... of course we cannot just lock up people because we think they might be capable of violence, but how long do we ignore the warning signs?

I remember when I was working as a doctor's receptionist in my late teens and a man came into the surgery one afternoon. I was alone and I knew that the man had a morbid hatred of doctors and believed himself to be a vampire of sorts. He was never allowed to be alone with a doctor as he had attacked various G.Ps previously and was mentally ill. And here he was was little old me alone in the surgery. As it turned out he stayed for a short time and then left. I asked one of the doctors why such a man was allowed to walk free when he posed such a threat.The reply was that until he actually did something very serious there was no excuse, no reason to detain him.So basically he had to seriously hurt someone before anything was done to protect people from him. He was a time bomb waiting to go off.

But did he ever go off? Yes, he was a frightening man, a man with cold, dead eyes, but that in itself is not a crime. He had rights too. You can't just lock someone up because they are mentally ill. The days of the asylum are long gone ... But what about the rights of the innocent? What about the rights of the Soccer Mom, having to hide every sharp implement in her house, having to teach her younger children to run to their car and lock the doors if her older son started to lose it?

The question I ask myself is what on earth was Adam Lanza's mother doing with assault rifles in her house? They were, apparently, all legal firearms, but, for the love of God ... who in their right mind needs guns like that (or any guns at all really...) especially when your son is mentally unstable?

As an English woman I suppose I have a very different viewpoint on guns to a lot of Americans. I read tonight that some NRA supporters were saying that if only the teachers had had guns there would not have been a massacre ... Hello???!!! From my point of view that is an insane thing to say. The stats tell a story. In the U.K last year there were 8 deaths caused by handguns. In the U.S - over 10,000.

The debate over the right to bear arms and the care of the mentally ill will roll on and on. I am not sure there will ever be an answer. If someone is really that determined to wreak death, destruction and misery upon innocent people then they will do so - whether they use a rifle or some other weapon. The awful thing is that caught in the middle are those who lose their lives, lose their futures.

Right now I hope that those poor children and their teachers are the last to ever lose their lives in such a ghastly pointless way. But I fear they will not be.

Joseph Kony, Invisible Children and the fundamental issue.

Having posted about Kony 2012 I have been sent a link by the fab Razmataz which questions the work of Invisible Children  with regards to the viral campaign. I read the article with interest and tried to weigh up the issues the writers Geoffrey York and Sonia Verma raise.

They write that:

... the wild success of the campaign has provoked an angry backlash on social media sites and from many Africans, and from scholars who study Africa. They say the campaign is simplistic and manipulative, with deceptive claims, murky finances and a questionable strategy.

The U.S. activists are “selling a pack of lies to unaware youth to raise money for themselves,” said Ugandan blogger TMS Ruge in one of a series of critical tweets.

Now, I don't want to be old fashioned here, but when I watched the film the thing that struck me was that letting a mass murderer remain free and able to abduct children was the key issue. I had the choice whether to buy an "action kit" from Invisible Children and being the sensible person I am I chose not to. I am not going to send money to a company I know nothing about. I did not immediately think that Invisible Children must be a totally pure organisation which I could sign up to without investigation.

What hit me was the fact that Joseph Kony was still able to commit atrocities. If Invisible Children have done anything wrong they will be dealt with. Joseph Kony has been murdering, inciting murder, raping, inciting rape, mutilating ... for 20 years. Surely this issue is greater than Invisible Children. It is the starting place for something to be done about an evil man.

image from invisible children

I did not watch the film and think "Hurrah! The West is going to save Africa!" What a simplistic view. I saw it as part of my responsibility as a citizen of the world, a mother, a daughter, a caring person, to step forward and say that I too was appalled by the actions of this man and his army. I saw this as a start and was moved by the response of so many young people who used Facebook to voice their horror over this man's actions.

This is not about the West saving Africa, its about murder, abduction and rape being unacceptable anywhere in the world. For 20 years this man has been able to escape justice. I just hope that the publicity about him helps bring him to court. I think and hope that the vast majority of people, whether they be black, white, African British or American, would want the same simple thing - that Joseph Kony, and after him the other cruel and evil people of the world, be brought to justice and stopped from continuing to behave in this way.

I may be naive and I may be criticised for being too trusting, but I want you to look beyond the smaller picture and into the greater one. What matters are those children, those people, their suffering and the chance that somehow I, we, could be a small part of stopping it. If I,we, don't take a step forward and say "I care. I want to help." - who will?






Post Script
I have received a comment from Inkling and I was so moved by both her words and those she quotes that I want to share them with you here. They are from Theodore Roosevelt. Thank you Inkling.


"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."