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Dayton Mayor On 24-Hour Security After Threats From Trump Backers

Dayton Mayor On 24-Hour Security After Threats From Trump Backers

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Dayton, Ohio Mayor Nan Whaley has been assigned a security detail after President Donald Trump turned his ire on the grieving local leader in the wake of a massacre in her city earlier this month that killed nine.

“Get the hell out of this country you disrespectful trash,” reads one message Whaley received, according to the Dayton Daily News. “Treason is death.”

Others “[contained] extremely abusive language and expletive-laced insults,” the paper reported.

Trump and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) visited Dayton on August 7, after a gunman opened fire at the popular downtown Oregon Historic District early Saturday morning on August 4. During a press conference following the president’s visit, Brown and Whaley said they had urged Trump to push gun legislation, including background checks, in the wake of the shooting.

Inexplicably, Trump later took to Twitter to claim the pair “misrepresented” his reception at the hospital, despite Brown and Whaley both acknowledging that victims and first responders were grateful for the president’s visit. In an interview with CNN, Whaley said she was “at a loss” for why Trump was angered by their statements.

“I respected the president and the office of the president” she later told the Dayton Daily News. “But I strongly want him to do something and the people of Dayton want him to do something, and so it’s my job to say that.”

As the Dayton Daily News reports, the decision to give Whaley around-the-clock security detail came from city law director Barbara Doseck and city commission office director Ariel Walker. It has since been “scaled back,” according to the report, but a police spokesman declined to “reveal what type of security has been or will be provided.”

As for Whaley, she said the detail is “the most extensive security I’ve ever had.”

“They are here for my safety, and if they think it’s important, then I think it’s important,” she told the newspaper.

For The Survivors, We Remember

For The Survivors, We Remember

In two weeks’ time, three mass shootings killed 34 people and left dozens more injured. We were outraged and in shock, and for a few days we managed to sustain a collective call for new laws that would make our country safer.

Now, we are moving on.

This is our human nature, to search for signs that we’re going to be OK.

Right now, rituals around a beginning school year can be a welcome distraction. Back-to-school deals are everywhere, sparking memories of our younger days, as students or young parents, especially if we can ignore the reported uptick in sales of bulletproof backpacks.

Yellow school buses are back, slowing down morning commutes with their sputtering and wheezing as they stop and go, stop and go. Carpool lines are full of little ones fastened tight in rocket-sized car seats, and traffic slows to a crawl in school zones because we want to keep America’s children safe.

Hold my hand in the street.

Hold my hand in the parking lot.

Hold my hand, hold my hand, hold my hand.

Perhaps you heard about this. On Tuesday, Perches Funeral Home in El Paso, Texas, posted this on its Facebook page:

“Mr. Antonio Basco was Married for 22yrs to his wife Margie Reckard, He had no other family. He welcomes anyone to attend his Wife’s services. On Friday August 16th, Perches Funeral Home Northeast on 4946 Hondo Pass from 5-9pm.

“Let’s show him & his Wife some El Paso Love.”

Antonio’s wife, Margie Reckard, was one of the people killed in the El Paso shooting. She was 63 years old. Her husband told KFOX-TV that he and Margie were together for 22 years.

“When I met her, she was an angel, and she still is,” he said. “I was supposed to be the strong one, but I found out I’m the weak one, and she’s going to be missed a lot.”

Newspaper style would have me refer to them as Basco and Reckard on subsequent reference, but that feels harsh. It’s not how we talk about people we know who are grieving, and now we all know that Antonio loved Margie, and he doesn’t want to be alone when he has to say goodbye.

In two weeks’ time, a total of 34 innocent people were gunned down in three American cities: Gilroy, California, El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. Dozens more were injured. We can pretend that life has moved on, but the survivors of these tragedies know differently. So do we.

Most of us have endured the loss of someone we love. We know how grief is prolonged and compounded by the evidence of a loved one’s interrupted life. A head’s imprint on a pillow. Reading glasses resting upside down on the unfinished page. The swipe of fingertips preserved in a favorite jar of hand cream. These everyday things take on the power of spooks and spirits in the aftermath of even the most expected endings. They linger, and sometimes they never leave.

In the hour after my mother’s death 20 years ago, I gathered up her clothes in the hospital room and noticed the tip of one of her hankies poking out from the pocket of her jacket. My mother always had tissues in her purse for “messy noses,” as she put it, but she also carried cloth hankies, for herself and to hand to others. “For the tears,” she said.

I tugged on the tip of the wadded up hankie in her pocket and pulled it out. It was stiff with dried tears she hadn’t wanted any of us to see. Twenty years later, I think of how, in her last days, my mother was still trying to protect us.

If you’ve ever grieved, you, too, have your stories.

In our country, a growing number of people are grieving the loss of loved ones who have died because of guns. We must continue the fight for gun reform, but we can do more. We do not have to know these survivors to bear witness to their pain. We do not have to know their names to acknowledge that their lives will never be the same. For them, we can remember.

Will this hurt our hearts? Likely yes, but we’ll be OK. Hearts break wide open, and in that space something new can be born.

We Cannot Afford Cynicism Now

We Cannot Afford Cynicism Now

Our 11-year-old grandson is with us for the week, and we are having the sort of conversations that indicate the learning has just begun — for me.

He and his parents recently completed a move of more than 2,000 miles. This is quite the adjustment for all involved, including their 4-year-old dog, Rumple. I hadn’t considered how disorienting it might be for a dog born on a tropical island to find himself suddenly in the Midwest, but then I’m not Rumple’s boy.

Clayton is mindful of his pup’s moods. When I mentioned how nice it is to have his steadfast companion during this transition, he shook his head and smiled.

“It’s a transition for both of us,” he said. “Rumple and I are more like an ecosystem. We’re helping each other be strong.”

Clayton was talking about his relationship with his beloved dog. I heard a new way to look at the pitfalls of cynicism.

Our conversation occurred only two days after a gunman had killed nine people and injured more than two dozen in a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, about a three-hour drive from our home in Cleveland. The gunman used a .223-caliber high-capacity rifle to shoot into a crowd at a popular nightspot at 1:05 a.m. He would have killed hundreds if not for the quick work of five Dayton police officers and a sergeant. Within 30 seconds, the gunman was dead.

Dayton became the second deadly mass shooting in America in less than a day, and the third in a week. Thirteen hours earlier, a gunman with an assault rifle killed 22 people and injured dozens at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. A few days before that, another gunman with an assault-style killed two children and one adult and injured 13 others at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California.

Investigations are ongoing, as are theories about motives, which is a loathsome word. As if there is ever a reason for innocent people to be gunned down.

My husband, Senator Sherrod Brown, and I spent much of Sunday in Dayton, with various community leaders and residents. I will never forget listening to several members of Dayton’s police force describe for us what it’s like to be first responders at the scene of a mass shooting. It’s war zone triage. Each victim is examined, and responders make split-second decisions about which ones can be saved, sometimes against a backdrop of pleas from victims’ friends and loved ones begging for a second glance.

That evening, during a vigil of hundreds in Dayton, the crowd shouted down Republican Governor Mike DeWine with a simple, profound chant: “Do something.”

Two days later, he announced at a news conference that he would try.

“I understand that anger, for it’s impossible to make sense out of what is senseless,” DeWine said. “Some chanted ‘do something’ and they were absolutely right.”

As NPR’s Andy Chow reported, DeWine introduced a “‘safety protection order'” that would allow a judge “to confiscate firearms from people who pose a threat to themselves or others. His plan would also require background checks for all gun purchases and transfers with some exemptions, strengthen penalties on crimes involving guns, and increase access to mental health treatment.”

Another Ohio Republican, Rep. Mike Turner, who is a former mayor of Dayton, delivered his own seismic shift, announcing his support “for restricting military-style weapon sales, magazine limits, and red flag legislation.”

DeWine will likely face steep opposition from Republican majorities in the statehouse, where a current bill under consideration would eliminate permits, training and background checks for those who carry concealed guns. So far, Turner is virtually the lone Republican voice of gun reform in Congress.

Both of these Republican men are also on the receiving end of skepticism and outright anger from liberals who’ve long championed gun legislation reform. I understand the cynicism, but I’m not on board. As I’ve written many times in the past, we can’t ask people to change and not give them the chance to do so. They’re going to need us.

For years, I’ve thought of cynicism as just another word for laziness, and a blight on one’s soul. But since that conversation with my grandson about his “ecosystem” of a relationship with his dog, I see it as something far worse.

Cynicism is not just about our mood, or a way to avoid another disappointment. It’s a betrayal of the people who need us, the ones we swear we’re fighting for and the ones we love. It weakens us as a community and a country, and leaves us untethered to hope.

If we keep acting like we expect nothing, that’s exactly what we’ll get.

What a way to live.

What a way to keep dying.

 

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

For Trump, Mass Shootings Are All About Him

For Trump, Mass Shootings Are All About Him

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

President Donald Trump was obviously irate with the fact that many in the media blamed him for stoking the anti-immigrant bigotry behind the recent mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. But like the much of the media, Trump can’t help but make everything about himself, as his response to the El Paso slaughter and the subsequent massacre in Dayton, Ohio, has made clear.

Though he didn’t speak publicly on Wednesday when he made the trip to Dayton, he lashed out at Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Mayor Nan Whaley after leaving the city, claiming they misrepresented his visit to the hospital. In fact, they didn’t misrepresent anything at all. All that seems to have happened is that they offered some criticisms of the president and didn’t sufficiently praise his performance at the hospital.  He claimed that there was “tremendous enthusiasm” at the hospital.

And shortly after leaving Dayton, the president released a campaign ad-style video of his visit.

Between visits, the president also used Twitter to attack former Vice President Joe Biden and Fox News host Shep Smith.

When he arrived in El Paso, Trump finally did talk to the press. And again, he baselessly trashed Whaley and Brown — saying they shouldn’t be “politicking today.” His main gripe, it seemed, was that they criticized his failure to move on gun control, despite his previous promises. And he repeated the false claim that they misrepresented his visit to the hospital.

And again, Trump emphasized how great a welcome he got at the hospitals. “They couldn’t believe it,” he said. He falsely called Sherrod Brown a “failed” presidential candidate (though he considered entering the 2020 race, he eventually declined to do so). He called Whaley and Brown “very dishonest people” while he was, in fact, lying about them.

“The love, the respect for the office of the presidency, it was — I wish you could there to see it,” Trump told the reporters of his hospital visits in both cities. Of course, it was the White House’s decision not to bring press to the hospitals.

But everything, for Trump, is about him, and how people react to him. “We had an amazing day,” he said of his trip to visit mass shooting victims.

The Associated Press reported that Trump is privately calling senators as he presses for background check legislation, legislation that is almost certain to fail in the GOP-controlled Senate and that the president previously threatened to veto. Trump has toyed with the idea of embracing some gun control measures before after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, but he ultimately backed away from this idea. He doesn’t actually have ideological commitments about gun control or Second Amendment rights, he just embraces whatever ideas he thinks will serve him well in the moment.

As soon as the conversation has moved passed the topic of mass shootings, Trump will drop the idea. Because the point isn’t about what is good governance or what is good policy — it’s always about what is good for Trump.