Today's the day when every other politician is wishing you a “Happy Memorial Day,” but this year, I refuse.
I’ve reached a breaking point, and it’s due in no small part to the response I’ve been witnessing to the controversy surrounding Gabe Kapler, Manager of the San Francisco Giants. Kapler is a man who has begun protesting the national anthem at his workplace because he can no longer show unwavering support for a nation that refuses to address the horrific weight of the gun violence it continues to suffer beneath. The pressure put on him to conform, and to come out for the national anthem, specifically on Memorial Day, has highlighted for me that Memorial Day is truly nothing more than one more disingenuous attempt at placation via “thoughts and prayers.” To be offended that someone like Gabe Kapler wants to focus on the innocent lives being sacrificed to gun violence through our government’s inaction on a day whose intention is to focus on the lives voluntarily sacrificed to preserve this nation for the next generation is farcical at best, and sickening at worst.
Memorial Day was never intended to be a bank holiday with burgers and fireworks, it is an essential reminder of a legacy of Americans who paid the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that their children would never have to, and yet today not only do we continue to dishonor their sacrifice the other 364 days of the year with the absolute bare minimum in services and securities for the families of those lost, we continue to allow large gun manufacturers and their lobbyists to spend hundreds of millions of dollars ensuring that capital gains across their industry will continue to be propped up and inflated despite life after life being taken in regularly occurring domestic terrorist attacks at our supermarkets, places of worships, and our children’s schools.
We live in a nation where our freely elected democratic government has become enslaved to the military industrial complex, our Senators and Representatives are unable to stand up to the NRA and the gun lobby and pass Common Sense gun reform; to ban private ownership of assault weapons, or even to pass mandatory training and licensing measures-- in order to drive a car in this nation citizens must pass two forms of training exams, meet regular licensing requirements, AND pay mandatory monthly insurance premiums --none of which is required to own a military grade weapon capable of murdering dozens of people in a matter of minutes.
If you want me to celebrate Veteran’s Day again, then help me improve our Veteran’s Affairs services to ensure that no veteran in this country ever finds themself without a roof over their head or a meal on the table. Help me to ensure that every single returning combatant receives the intensive mental health and trauma care that they need to live a safe and healthy life back home. If you want me to celebrate Memorial Day again, then let’s use the resources we have to ensure that the families of all of those who were lost in foreign combat are taken care of, that they forever have access to health care, education ,and housing. The indescribable loss, what was taken from their family, can never be replaced. If we want Memorial Day to mean something, then we must be committed to truly giving everything we can to pay these impossible debts, not just one day a year of “thoughts and prayers.” If our elected officials continue to refuse to take action, then I’m with Gabe, and I’m going to have to sit this one out.
Joshua Weil
Democrat for U.S. Senate (FL)
