My God, someone actually did it. I didn't think it was out there. I don't really think I had a clue what it would look like if it were out there. I knew, like everyone else in this country knows, that we somehow need to start talking to each other instead of past each other about how to simultaneously protect the rights people care about and the children they care about even more; but I had no clue how to go about starting that conversation.
The Facebook fans of J. Michael Straczynski started that conversation. And it's a whopper. They did an absolutely amazing job of breaking past the talking points and working together. And they legitimately found a great deal of common ground.
You need to read this. We all need to read it, and then we need to get it out there in the world where other people will read it. I'm going to start a petition on the White House website which includes most of the items they came up with, and I hope we can get enough signatures on it from this community and our friends and neighbors that it will be read and answered.
It's almost certainly not enough. But it's far and away the best beginning I have seen in the twenty years I've been watching, helplessly, as one massacre after another is followed by the desperation to start talking about the issue, and then nobody says anything constructive.
Please read. And then please spread the word.
[UPDATE: There is absolutely no way to fit all seven proposals into a petition. And anything that doesn't use the specifics is going to look like just another, "Please have the conversation already" petition. I am not asking the President to reinvent the wheel, I'm asking him to address the specific suggestions that those people developed, meaning I need to figure out a way to pare it down to the very basics and fit that in. Or else create an independent petition, not on that website, and trust to getting so many signatures that it would draw attention even without going through channels. I admit freely that I am a novice at organizing; I've been a committed activist for a long time, but generally as a follower. I don't write the things, I sign them. If anyone who knows how to build them from scratch is willing to help me out on this, I would be very grateful.]
