Like so many of you, we’ve spent this week thinking about the lives changed forever by the shooting at Seattle Center.
Everyone can agree that a summer festival should be a place where families and friends can come together without the fear of violence. Instead, another act of gun violence has terrorized our communities, leaving many of us traumatized and grieving. Our hearts remain with everyone whose lives were impacted.
These are the events that collectively shock and scare us. But for too many people, in too many communities, the threat of gun violence is an everyday reality, as our board member and journalist Marcus Harrison Green wrote this week in the South Seattle Emerald. We encourage you to read the piece.
It’s a reminder that while this shooting shocked many people, gun violence has been disrupting lives in neighborhoods across Seattle for years. Too often, families living with this reality every day have had to carry their grief without the same public attention or urgency.
That doesn’t mean the pain at Seattle Center matters any less. At the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, we believe our response to tragedy must be bigger than a single news cycle. We owe it to every community to keep building a future where people can gather without fear and where young people have opportunities instead of violence.
That work requires all of us.
Here are a few ways you can help:
- Read and share the South Seattle Emerald column with your network
- Reach out to someone who may be carrying the weight of this week’s violence. Grief and trauma don’t always show themselves immediately.
- If you’re able, support the Alliance for Gun Responsibility’s work to pass lifesaving policies, educate communities, and hold leaders accountable.
- Stay engaged. Moments like this deserve more than our attention. They deserve our continued action.
Thank you for being part of a community that believes every life is worth protecting.
In solidarity,
The Alliance for Gun Responsibility
ALLIANCE FOR GUN RESPONSIBILITY
P.O. Box 4187 Seattle, WA 98194