Friend,

Last night, a small group Common Dreams staff members who live in and around Portland, Maine, got together for dinner, enjoying each other's company even as we discussed the latest chaos in Congress, the war in Gaza, and other issues you would expect progressive journalists to discuss.

Around 8 p.m., just as we were finishing our meal, the cell phones on the table began to buzz and rattle.

The mass shooting in Lewiston is close to home for many of us. We have friends, family, and colleagues in that community. Our children know those children. We drive those roads that police are now scouring.

My young kids are home with me today because school was canceled due to the ongoing manhunt. My wife, a first-grade teacher, has been on numerous calls with colleagues as they mobilize a response and strategize about how they will explain what happened to students as young as six and seven.

Of course, I’ve covered dozens and dozens (and dozens) of mass shootings during my years as a journalist, but today—with a shelter-in-place order still in effect for large areas where I live—there'e one question I find myself asking: what does it really mean to find safety when the world's like this?

My family feels safe where we are right now. But last night in Lewiston, people were laughing with friends one moment, and in the next had no place to shelter from an assault rifle’s bullets.

I’ve also been thinking about the children and other innocent people in Gaza who have no safe place to shelter—not in their homes, not even in a hospital. And I have thought about those who died in southern Israel on October 7, many of whom had built "safe rooms" inside their homes that still weren't enough to save them.

In a world that refuses to confront its addiction to guns, violence, and war, it becomes harder and harder to know what it means when we ask people to "shelter in place."

The anger, frustration, and woe that result from that can be paralyzing. Yet we have no choice but to forge ahead with a loving heartache and a yearning for a better world.

If you want to support our ongoing coverage of this world, please know from the bottom of our hearts that we cherish your generosity. We believe deeply that independent journalism always has a role to play, and it’s the best way we know to be part of the solution.

Most importantly, I wanted to thank you, as a reader of Common Dreams, for being a part of the solution, too. Wherever you are in the world today, we need you to keep the empathy for others burning and the hope for a better world alive.