One in five Americans has had family member killed by gun violence – study [theguardian.com]

What communities love in common — their children — is what can strengthen communities. PACEs science is our “why.”

This is report that one in five Americans has lost a family member to gun violence is stunning news and translates into millions upon millions of children being traumatized.

We are looking at preventable trauma.

I’ve heard it said that community forms around what people in the community love most.

If our collective community, the United States, truly loves its children, I don’t understand how we can leave our children in such a state of despair.

The recent “World Happiness Report” showed the happiest countries are those measuring  the health and well-being of their people as their key indicators of success, and not the Gross Domestic Product or the stock report.

The U.S. ranks 15th in the World Happiness Report. Despite our wealth (which is highly concentrated in the upper 1%) and our natural resources, our military strength (this does not make me happier; does it you?) and countless other privileges people in this nation enjoy.

OR do they?

Our inequity is our downfall. Not just the financial inequity but the power differential, access to healthcare, schools, safe and stable housing, equitable education, generational wealth building (that is a crime and another story) our inequitable access to clean air, green spaces, healthy food!

Our inability as a nation to own the fact that America was built on the stolen lands of millions of slaughtered indigenous peoples, and with the labor of kidnapped and enslaved people from Africa whose “liberation” was in name only is part of our pride, greed, hubris, and the shame that fuels hatred and division.

One in ten Black children has lost a parent. One in five Americans have lost a family member to some form of gun violence (including suicide).  The gains in lifting half of our children out of poverty with different Covid relief funding have been wiped out for many families by cuts to various programs that could have been continued, IF we really put our money where we say our hearts are.

I believe solutions are in the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences. PACEs science. In paying people a living wage (the minimum wage has not increased since 2009!) and helping families get a decent start, as is the case in the “happiest” countries where there is paid family leave, there are supports to families with young children (including state-supported child care) there is health insurance.  Where education and medical bills don’t prevent people from being able to live in decent housing and enjoy what are deemed luxuries to even people with decent jobs: some time off to spend bonding with their children, taking care of themselves and their loved ones.

We need to take the page out of the playbook of the World Happiness Report and march it to our elected officials and policy makers and demand the safety and support people in other wealthy nations take for granted!

In the U.S., we don’t thrive.

We don’t flourish.

Most of us are in survival mode and it is killing us to keep our feet on the gas and the brakes at the same time; to tolerate generations of collective trauma, abuse, racism, inequity, and the shame of all of that.

We have the means to flourish and thrive. We just need the collective will to demand, together, the fair supports to do so from our workplaces, our elected officials, each other.

Justin Jones and Justin Pearson of Tennessee are two young legislators with some answers. If you know them, talk to them about PACEs science. You will give them crucial information to add to their “why.”

We all need to be sharing this information everywhere, all the time, all at once, to make it count and make it stick.

Please forward your PACEs Connection Weekly RoundUp and Weekender enewsletters to your elected officials and local leaders. Ask them to join PACEs Connection. It’s free. You can help give people the information to make better choices for our children.  

Carey Sipp