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violence
On Charlie Kirk, Public Grieving, and Violence
The country is turning him into a symbol, even as his legacy fuels harm, fear, and loss for families who will never be mourned this loudly.
Sep 12, 2025
I want to be clear: I don’t condone killing of any kind. That’s not who I am, and that’s not what I believe.
This post is also not about advocating for or against gun laws (although we know that the majority of Americans do agree with common-sense laws). This is about societal attention and whose lives are mourned publicly, and how certain narratives and policies shape who we grieve and why.
I am struck by how many people on my feed are publicly grieving Charlie Kirk. It feels dissonant. Let me explain why.
None of these same people posted about Minnesota House Member, Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, and her husband being murdered in their sleep. Nor did they post about Speaker John Hoffman and his wife being shot in their sleep by the same shooter (they did survive).
None posted about the 48 school shootings that have occurred already in 2025, leaving 19 dead and 81 injured (including one just hours after Kirk was shot, where two more children are critically injured, and at least four more injured in the Colorado school shooting).
None posted about the 50,000+ Palestinian children killed or injured in what can only be described as genocide.
None posted about the 688 women in the US who died in childbirth in 2024, or the 49,000 who almost did. Primarily women of color of course.
None posted about the 14 people who have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody so far this year.
I could go on and on with these examples.
He spent his career normalizing deadly ideas (from gun culture to dehumanization), and in the end, he was consumed by the same violence he helped spread.
Here’s the dissonance: Charlie Kirk actively contributed to the narratives and policies that fueled this violence. He supported policies that tore children from their parents’ arms, while claiming to be a family man. He spread racist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, and Islamophobic ideology while claiming to be a Christian. He near shouted misogynistic ideals while being married to a woman. Through Turning Point USA, he built a media machine that thrived on outrage, disinformation, and deepening division.
He once said, “I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that—it does a lot of damage.” If you don’t believe in empathy, it makes it much easier to oppress others and create division. It makes it much easier to push a narrative without regard for the consequences of that narrative.
He spent his career normalizing deadly ideas (from gun culture to dehumanization), and in the end, he was consumed by the same violence he helped spread.
Charlie Kirk didn’t physically commit violence himself, though he profited from fear, division, and policies that harmed and continue to harm marginalized people, thus perpetuating the violence. His influence amplified oppression, and that influence brought him financial gain, visibility, and political power.
It is, of course, deeply sad for his children. No child should have to lose a parent like this.
That being said, the way his death is being framed publicly goes beyond grief. It edges into martyrdom. This is turning him into a symbol, even as his legacy fuels harm, fear, and loss for families who will never be mourned this loudly.
We should grieve children, families, and communities first. Not the people who profited from their suffering.
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Our Journey Beyond the God of Violence
The consciousness of fear won’t go away, but our sense of what constitutes power over it—what constitutes God—must, and will, continue to evolve.
Sep 07, 2025
Who am I (now)? I’m still trying to figure this out. It’s a harder job, I fear, even than putting all my dishes, all my clothes, all my books and miscellany away. I have moved, as I’ve noted, from my house of 40 years—from the city of Chicago, where I lived for almost half a century—to a retirement community in Appleton, Wisconsin, to be near my family.
Yeah, it’s called a retirement community, not an old folks’ home or some other cynically realistic name, which is fine with me, even though, dadgummit, I ain’t retired. But as I sit at my computer today—my primary writing day—I feel the urge to retire, aka, give up, shrug, and do nothing except kill time. At the same time, a terrifying cry rips through me. I’ve gotta keep writing! Never has this cry felt more urgent.
My life is totally different now, but my journey, to face the soul of the unknown, to carve understanding from it and put it into words, continues. Yes, things are different. The unknown is larger and more profound for me than it’s ever been. and I feel, in a way, more lost than I’ve felt since childhood. So my writing has to confront a paradox. How can I presume to write with certainty if I don’t know what I’m talking about? I see only one way forward: Intensify the honesty I bring to my words—personalize it—and in the process turn certainty into complexity.
I say this as I try to transition beyond the sheerly personal columns I’ve written in the last two months, as my life has changed, and look again at the world at large, which, oh Lord, continues to run amok... from the school shooting last week in Minneapolis to the bombing and starvation and endless horror in Gaza and around the world, which “world leaders” continue to inflict on those dubbed the enemy, or children of the enemy (and thus the future enemy).
This is my world. I feel, ever more deeply, the dehumanization that is inextricably a part of the global boundaries—national and personal, political and spiritual—we have created, and which we sustain with an us-vs.-them militarism that puts the whole planet in danger. Even as I age, I cannot let myself grow dull to this. I can only scream: No-o-o-o!
And I quote part of a poem I wrote in the wake of the 1999 Columbine massacre, about a vigil gun-rights advocates held in defiance of President Bill Clinton’s visit to the site of the horror. They held signs that said “Gun Control Kills Kids” and “We Will Never Give Up Our Guns.” The poem is called “Vigil.”
...I am in awe
of the deadeye imperturbability
of the armed righteous,
who look upon the world’s suffering
and see targets.
They stand in potent prayer
with hands clasped
and arms extended,
judgment on a hairtrigger,
God in the recoil.
I believe them.
I believe they believe
in their own innocence
and the innocence of guns,
to clean, to cradle,
to cherish and employ.
What you have to understand
is the good they do,
picking off home invaders,
the furtive dark-clad,
the malevolent, the incomprehensible,
the hungry.
More innocent still
is the worship of guns
and the worship of the gods
they allow us to become...
The consciousness of fear won’t go away, but our sense of what constitutes power over it—what constitutes God—must, and will, continue to evolve. This is the hope I pray and bleed for. This is the hope I carry in my heart as I hobble through my new apartment, reminding myself that our journey isn’t over.
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Let’s Not Use a Lone Crime to Justify Ongoing Crimes Against Humanity
The mainstream U.S. media has responded to the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees in D.C. by intensifying its campaign to associate the Palestine solidarity movement with antisemitism and violence.
Jun 02, 2025
Was the Washington D.C. attack antisemitic?
In the U.S. mainstream media, that question isn’t even asked—the answer, apparently, goes without saying. The alleged assassin said, “Free, free Palestine,” participated in protests against Israel’s war against Gaza, and shared or authored a social media post that “condemned the Israeli and American governments and what it called atrocities committed by the Israeli military against Palestinians.” The victims were Israeli embassy employees.
Mainstream media, and the U.S. bipartisan consensus, criminalize protest by conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, conflating emotional distress with harassment, and conflating disruption—no matter how peaceful—with violence.
After describing these facts (and distancing itself from the well-documented fact that the Israeli military was committing atrocities against Palestinians), The New York Times immediately asked, “Has there been a rise in antisemitic attacks?” Like the major organizations that track “antisemitic incidents,” the Times does not distinguish between incidents that target Israel and its policies, and incidents that target Jews. The Times thus joins the bipartisan consensus that has increasingly made it impossible to name or protest Israel’s daily unfolding crimes against humanity without being accused of antisemitism.
I don’t have any inside information on Elias Rodriguez’s motives, beyond his words at the scene and the manifesto attributed to him. Neither these sources nor the evidence compiled by the FBI and the Times provide any hints of antisemitism. Instead, they express his outrage at Israeli atrocities in Gaza. But that didn’t stop the NYT, The Washington Post, NPR, and other sources from leaping to the conclusion.
When Does a Movement Get Blamed for a Lone Shooter?
The incident bears comparison to Luigi Mangione’s alleged shooting of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, in December 2024. In both cases, the accused declared a clear political motive for the killing. In both cases, the alleged killers expressed political sentiments widely shared in the U.S. population: outrage at health insurance companies for their callous treatment of their customers, and outrage at Israel for its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
A smaller portion of the population has actually mobilized for change in both areas, organizing for Medicare for All and for a cease-fire, aid, and justice for Palestinians.
There is one big contradiction in the coverage though. In the Luigi Mangione case, the press reported on the outpouring of popular support for his act of rage with sympathy. “The crux of their support is based on a deep resentment and anger at the American healthcare system and insurance companies,” wrote CNN. “Mr. Mangione has inspired documentaries about his life and remains a topic of interest on social media. The GiveSendGo fund-raising page for his defense has reeled in donations and a steady stream of supportive notes,” commented The New York Times.
If anyone has normalized violence, it is the United States, with the world’s largest military spending, its largest military-industrial complex, its endless wars, its worldwide bases, and its non-stop glorification of military power and insistence on Israel’s “right to defend itself.”
Nor were his supporters criminalized or denounced. The Times was more bemused than critical in its reporting on rallies and protests supporting Mangione. The newspaper openly acknowledged that “UnitedHealthcare has long been the target of fury for denying claims, and has faced scrutiny for using algorithms to refuse coverage” and explained that protesters saw the murder as “a blow against America’s profit-driven healthcare system.”
Still, Mangione was consistently portrayed as a lone individual. Never once was he associated with the Medicare for All movement. Nor was the Medicare for All movement blamed for his act of violence. In fact, it wasn’t even mentioned in the massive coverage.
Not so for Elias Rodriguez. The Times framed the D.C. murders as the problem of the Palestine solidarity movement. “Pro-Palestinian Movement Faces an Uncertain Path After D.C. Attack,” it declared ominously, days after the attack. “The slaying of two Israeli Embassy workers cast a harsh spotlight on pro-Palestinian groups in the United States.” The Times noted that Rodriguez “chanted the same slogan, in the same cadence” that was chanted in college protests (“Free, free Palestine”) and wondered whether he was “influenced by more extreme pro-Palestinian organizations that reach Americans online and that glorify the actions of Hamas and other armed resistance groups.”
“Even peaceful protests,” the Times warned, might influence “attitudes against people connected to Israel.”
Equating Palestinian Rights With Violence
Well aware that they would be the first to be blamed, Palestine rights organizations “rushed to condemn” the attack. Nevertheless, the Times appeared obsessed with uncovering support for violence among them. “Protesters who chant ‘Free, free Palestine’ are almost always using tactics of nonviolent resistance. But the groups that organize behind Free Palestine banners also vary in their philosophies. Some advocate complete nonviolence in their broader approach, akin to anti-war protesters. Others back the right of Palestinians to engage in armed resistance against Israel, which they consider a right under international law, because they consider Israel the occupier of Palestinian lands.”
Consider? In fact armed resistance against occupation is a right under international law, and Israel does occupy Palestinian lands.
That’s not enough for the Times, though. Acceptable organizations must “advocate complete nonviolence.” Apparently, believing that international law permits violence under some circumstances also counts as “violence”?
But more to the point: The Times acknowledges that the protestors “almost always” use nonviolent tactics. It doesn’t give any examples here of the supposed “violent” exceptions, but Times editorial write Nicholas Kristof gives a hint when he chides student protesters because “peaceful protests have tipped into occupations of buildings, risks to commencements, and what I see as undue tolerance of antisemitism, chaos, vandalism, and extremism.” So, occupying a building or protesting at a commencement now counts as “violence”? Have Kristof and his colleagues never heard of civil disobedience?
Opposing Wars vs Commitment to Nonviolence
I have been attending anti-war protests since 1967 when my parents took me to a protest against the Vietnam War. I knew little about the concept of nonviolence, but I knew that dropping bombs on peasant villages a world away was wrong. It was drizzling. Some counterprotestors threw raw eggs at us, and some egg splashed on my raincoat. My mother said something along the lines of, “You know we are on the right side because we are standing here quietly, and they are the ones throwing things at us.” It felt like a microcosm of what I understood about the U.S. and Vietnam: The U.S. was on the wrong side because it was the one throwing the bombs.
Since that day I’ve been to many anti-war protests. My life has been shaped by an almost constant drumbeat of U.S. (and U.S.-funded or supported) wars in lands distant and not-so-distant, and I have protested many of them, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and now Gaza.
Over the years I’ve worked with many people whose politics are based on a commitment to nonviolence. I respect them deeply. But my politics has always been based more on the particulars: In the unequal wars where the U.S. is the clear aggressor, I want to make it stop.
I could say that I condemn every murder that has ever taken place since the beginning of time. But that’s a politically meaningless statement.
Vietnam Veteran Brian Willson was one of those people who believed deeply in nonviolence. In 1987—20 years after my first anti-war protest—he lay down on the train tracks to disrupt the trains carrying munitions from the Concord Naval Weapons Station, headed for El Salvador and the Contras in Nicaragua. For most of us, that seemed like the ultimate act of nonviolence: placing his body on the line to obstruct war. Today, commentators seem to conflate such “disruption” with violence.
That day, instead of slowing down and waiting for police to remove the protesters, the train sped up and ran over Willson, tearing off his legs.
I wasn’t there, but I joined the protest in Concord the following weekend when outraged protesters began to literally tear up the bloodied tracks with their bare hands. I hung back—not out of any moral predicament over whether physical destruction of the machinery of war was “violent” or “justified” but simply scared by (even though I shared) the rage of the crowd. Still, I gladly accepted a rusted tie nail that someone offered me. It still sits on the mantlepiece in my living room.
We live in a world, and a country, in which violence in the form of war is utterly normalized. Politicians, institutions, and holidays honor those who engage in military violence, and almost all of us are forced to be complicit in it. The manufacture of weapons of mass destruction is central to our economy. And we are in the midst of a U.S.-funded genocide in Gaza. Yet business leaders, politicians, and the media obsess endlessly instead over parsing the language of protesters to uncover evidence of their lack of commitment to nonviolence.
Is Israel’s “Right to Defend Itself” a Justification for Violence?
Since October 7 it’s almost impossible to find a U.S. mainstream media outlet or politician—from former President Joe Biden to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to current President Donald Trump—or pundit—from conservative centrist David Brooks to the mainstream liberal Ezra Klein—who doesn’t qualify even the mildest critique of Israel by insisting that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” None of them adopts a principled adherence to nonviolence.
Yet, they agree that Palestinians must make that commitment and accept a “demilitarized Palestinian state.” They never speak of a future Palestinian state’s right to defend itself.
Criminalizing Protest: Media Complicity
Mainstream media, and the U.S. bipartisan consensus, criminalize protest by conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, conflating emotional distress with harassment, and conflating disruption—no matter how peaceful—with violence.
Here’s how the Times summarized the campus protests in March 2025:
Much of the on-campus protest at Columbia was peaceful. But as both the encampment and the students’ fervor grew, some students and members of the faculty said they felt the already much-disputed lines between anti-Zionism and antisemitism were blurring beyond distinction. Many Jewish students said they felt fearful on campus because of chants, signs, and literature at the encampment that sometimes expressed support for the Hamas-led terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. There were also specific allegations of antisemitism and an uproar when video surfaced online of a student protest leader saying, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” (He was later suspended.)
Note how the Times blurs “feelings,” “antisemitism,” and violence.
Amidst the hysteria about “violence,” nonviolent protest has increasingly been criminalized in the United States—beginning with forms of protest against Israel. Well before October 7, nonviolent protest in the form of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement was criminalized, as was much discussion of Israel. Using the word “genocide,” accusing Israel of racism, comparing Israel’s eliminationist campaign against Palestinians to the Holocaust, calling Zionism a form of racism—are all prohibited by legal definitions of antisemitism. Meanwhile the Trump administration has begun to detain and deport noncitizen Palestine activists on vague charges that their beliefs “condoning antisemitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine” American foreign policy. How, then, can anyone protest against Israeli violence?
Is Protest Harassment?
Alex Gourevitch recently pointed out that campus and police crackdowns on protests on the grounds that they were loud, disruptive, refused to disperse, or made some students feel fearful essentially eliminate the right to protest altogether. As Gourevitch explains, “Feelings of unease would never suffice to meet the legal standard of a ‘hostile environment.’ Proving that one has been threatened or harassed requires objective evidence, not just a subjective sense of fear.”
Antidiscrimination laws prohibit creating a “hostile work environment.” But Gourevitch emphasizes that “whatever the proper domain of the hostile environment concept, it was never meant to (and shouldn’t) extend to protest. It is not just that protests involve political expression. They are a particular kind of political expression: public expressions of hostility toward political views and often the people who hold them. If applied to speech in the context of protest, the hostile environment standard—or any norm that takes feelings of fear and insecurity as grounds for intervention—would make protest impossible.”
Who Are the Real Purveyors of Violence?
If anyone has normalized violence, it is the United States, with the world’s largest military spending, its largest military-industrial complex, its endless wars, its worldwide bases, and its non-stop glorification of military power and insistence on Israel’s “right to defend itself.” And it’s Israel, with its now 19-month genocidal attack on Gaza, where 82% of the country’s Jewish population supports the expulsion of the entire Palestinian population and the government has openly declared that goal.
Schoolchildren may know Martin Luther King Jr. as a paragon of nonviolence. But few understand his explanation of nonviolence in his1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” His decision to speak out against the U.S. war in Vietnam, he said “grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North… As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems… that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask—and rightly so—what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government.” His point was not to “justify” urban violence in the U.S., but to emphasize the need to confront large-scale, structural violence.
If we oppose violence, let’s not focus on demonizing those who are trying to stop the violence. Let’s not criminalize a wide range of nonviolent activities—including protesting, disrupting, occupying, writing, and speaking—aimed at naming, and stopping, a genocide. Let’s not grant impunity to those dropping the bombs. Let’s not allow a country—Israel—to get away with mass murder just because it claims to represent Jews. And let’s not use a lone crime—the murders in D.C.—to justify ongoing crimes against humanity.
John F. Kennedy said that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” It’s hard not to look back on those words with some irony, given the overwhelming ways that U.S. Cold War policy in Latin America used violence, time and time again, to crush dissent there. But in today’s climate, many of us would fear the consequences of making such a statement.
I could say that I condemn every murder that has ever taken place since the beginning of time. But that’s a politically meaningless statement. I’m more interested in joining those trying to stop the mass murder and starvation in Gaza that’s being spurred by my government and paid for with my tax money—the murders that maybe, just maybe, we can do something about.
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