You are receiving this email as one of Alexandra’s most engaged followers. If you no longer wish to receive emails or updates, please click the “unsubscribe” link below. Hi John, Two days ago, as Roxborough High School's football team ended a scrimmage, a car of five attackers unloaded and fired into the players, injuring four players and critically injuring one 14-year-old boy who later died in the hospital. Roxborough, the Philadelphia neighborhood I live in, has erupted into pain. Schools are built with the purpose of growing children, educating children, and providing a safe space for children to experience life and develop their life skills. Athletics are further enrichment of that development—teaching teamwork, hard work, sportsmanship, integrity, and competitiveness. Sports are viewed as violence prevention programs, mental health programs, social development as well as physical fitness. This Tuesday, that safe haven was ambushed, stolen, and turned into a war zone. We all want a quick fix to this violence, but there isn't one. Before we can move forward, we have to work backwards from the moment tragedy struck. How did we arrive here: when a 14 year old boy is shot and killed in an ambush while leaving a football scrimmage? I don't know what it feels like to wake up one morning and decide to take someone's life, but I would imagine someone having a life that leads up to that moment learns a lot about hate, cruelty, injustice, violence and has very few lessons on love. The solution does start with the politicians, but it doesn't end there. Elected officials and candidates need to run on a politics of love—do our actions or legislation uplift or repress communities? Do they provide more resources to communities or do they lead to a greater struggle? Schools are just as important as the politicians—what sort of environments are students getting at school? Are they being uplifted? Is curiosity encouraged? Are different learning styles and levels being met? Do they have the resources to provide the materials and attention every student needs? Or are students criminalized in our school systems, are they told to put their heads down and learn, are they bullied for being different? Are they deprived of materials and individual attention? Are their sports teams funded? Do all players on a team have the equipment they need to be successful or are there disparities within a team? What about their care providers? Do our students have a pediatrician who takes time with them or are they a 20 minute slot on the schedule? Do they have a therapist or counselor? What happens when students get sick or injured—especially student athletes? Are they able to take the time they need to recover or does the grind of our current systems push them back to their feet too early? What about home? Do their parents have the resources they need to be able to spend time with their family, to be able to maintain a stable roof over their heads, to be able to transport their children safely to after school programs and weekend events, to be able to provide a filling and balanced meal on the table? Where do parents learn how to parent? And lastly, we have our individual level and how we interact with one another. Do we contribute love to this world through our interactions or do we take away love? There is a way out and forward, but we need to understand all the small and big failures that led us to the moment that someone wakes up in the morning and decides to take a life. We have to take responsibility and hold all levels of this system accountable for poorly raising our children. When I was eleven years old, I wrote a poem after a school shooting and I asked the question are we responsible for the creation of these monsters? Eighteen years later, I have the answer—yes, we are responsible and they're not monsters. We all need to step forward and take responsibility to change this. From top to bottom, we are witnessing systemic failure. To change it, we need to love each other on behalf of the world we want to live in, we need to advocate for allocation of resources that creates the world we want to live in, and we need to vote on behalf of the world we want to live in. We are not helpless, and it will take all of us believing in the politics of love. It will take all of us to push this boulder of society up a mountain it has tumbled so far down from. We are no shining city on a hill. — Alexandra Hunt Donate Now FOLLOW ALEXANDRA ON This email was sent to [email protected]. Our email program is the biggest way we stay connected and raise money for the fight ahead. In fact, there is no single greater source for our exploratory committee fundraising than emails like this one. 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