~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Yesterday I attended a vigil for the massacre of 49 people in Orlando, Florida, that erupted in the early morning hours a week ago Sunday, on June 12.
The service was in a small Florida town far south of the big city that is home to Disneyland and Pulse Nightclub. The city council of this thoughtful little town wrote a letter of condolence to the city of Orlando; the mayor read it to us, saying how difficult it was to write while thinking about how it could have happened here, anywhere, in places one thinks safe.
The little town has a miniscule police department that offered help and moral support to the big city; a detective talked to us in a soft and breaking voice about how first responders are the ones who run toward the bullets and how in years to come they still have nightmares about what they have had to see and do in the line of duty. The two-engine fire department asked Orlando to please ask for help from them. The county sheriff talked about how law enforcement training is ongoing, and the training is hardcore and helpful, but that there is no training that can ever prepare a cop or a fireman or a nurse or doctor for the actuality of a massacre, of blood everywhere, of stepping over bodies to get to those you might still be able to help.
The Chamber of Commerce organized the memorial service, although they said that it was easy because each person they asked for help said yes before the question was finished. The vigil of support and mourning by townspeople for those who died senselessly and horribly many miles away had music, food, sweet tea and cookies, besides the articulate speakers, some of them friends of the dead and wounded. Afterward, doves circled the yard where we stood with our candles, hoping as always, for peace. The president of the Chamber, a usually jovial fellow who on normal days calls himself an entertainer, was somber and full of tears. He talked about his brother in Scotland carrying on a memorial service there. “This, what we are doing here this afternoon, is going on around the globe,” he said.
The president of the Chamber broke down, as did another speaker, the publisher of the newspaper. The president of the county LGBT organization was so sad she was barely audible and caused tears in many of us. The vice-mayor was slow-speaking and precise in her simple words. She talked calmly about how if each of us said, “I am the problem,” things would change.
Recognizing that one’s own self is the problem, she said, means owning up to all the times we never speak up when someone tells a gay joke or a sexist joke or a racist joke; or we add to gossip — about anything; or we remain quiet and do not make it stop. She reminded us that every person hurt by gossip or comment or taunt or look, every person not accepted for what he or she is, every person denigrated for being different implodes or explodes in various ways.
She said the world would change if we had courage when with our peers, if we did this moral thing of speaking up. And then at the end of the day we would be able to say, “I am the solution.”
