El Paso, Dayton healing differently
One treats shooting like a scar, the other like a tattoo
#ElPasoStrong and #DaytonStrong are slogans all over each town.
Billboards. T-shirts. Graffiti. Grocery stores. Bumper stickers. High schools. Shop windows.
It’s a reminder of the true-blue, chinup American dignity and resolve required after a madman shoots up a crowd and kills scores of strangers. #VegasStrong and #OrlandoStrong and #ParklandStrong and, hey, why not? It helped after the Boston Marathon bombing, right?
Being “#strong” might feel like it’s all we can do, but really it’s just a start. True strength comes from action.
I was in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, recently to see how people might be healing from the back-to-back shootings in those communities that together killed more than 30 people and wounded about 50 others.
The responses are as different as the cultures in the Rust Belt and the Southwest.
Dayton is treating its mass shooting like a scar, trying to heal it and make the hurt go away.
El Paso is treating it like a tattoo, highlighting it and making sure it’s visible for anyone who wants to see.
But there are similarities, too. For one thing, people in each town are plenty “#strong.”
It was inspiring to see. It helped me realize that action is the new “#strong.”
Dayton and El Paso join grim list
It feels like something sinister started 20 years ago in Columbine.
Before that could any of us have imagined Tucson? Or Aurora? Or Sandy Hook?
Or the need for a national slogan like “#strong”?
There have been nearly 1,700 shootings over the last five years with “four or more victims killed or injured by gun violence in a single time frame, with no cooling down period, not including the shooter,” reports The Gun Violence Archive.
Hardly a day goes by that they don’t update their list. Meanwhile, our memories go back a lot further than 2014.
Mass shootings seem to grip us in a way that other tragedies don’t.
Part of the problem is that there’s no simple solution.
But if we take “#strong” as a call to action, there are a million ways to make progress.
In El Paso: A flood of emotions
People here are quick to tell visitors how safe their city is.
They talk about “top-10 lists” that run in the paper and pop up on local newscasts. They point out clean downtown streets and tidy neighborhoods.
But it feels different back behind the Walmart where survivors escaped Aug. 3 when a 21-year-old man from far-away Dallas-Fort Worth shot and killed 22 people and injured another 24, mostly shoppers looking for back-to-school sales.
Months after the attack, teddy bears, candles, T-shirts, Bible verses, toys, posters, flowers and hand-painted signs lined a 6-foot-high, quarter-mile-long fence. Someone hung a football jersey with the number “22,” marking the victims killed. Every few feet, there’s something that reads “#ElPasoStrong.”
No one could have predicted how large the memorial would get or how long it would last.
“On the news, you just kinda see a small glimpse of it,” Chris Kahoe said. “You don’t see how big it is. Seeing it in person brings the emotions out a little bit, the reality of it, the scope of it. … You just feel sorry for the people and, mostly, sadness. And then how much others loved and cared about these people.”
Kahoe lives in El Paso, but was seeing the memorial for the first time.
It was the same for Adrian Broaddus. “The first thing that hit me was, ‘I can’t believe this is still here,’” he said. “I thought this would be up one week, two weeks. But this is now two months later. Looks like more things have been added on. Maybe even on a daily basis.”
It was clear that seeing it had affected him. There was a mix of shock and sadness in his eyes.
“It was very tough to be there,” he said later. “It was very hard to see. I kind of tried to avoid this. It’s been hard for me to muster up the courage to go to the memorial.”
In Dayton: A call for peace
There’s no memorial here.
City leaders and business owners decided to take down the photos and candles and flowers and stuffed animals and signs that say “#DaytonStrong” after a homeless woman got possessive and argued with anyone who tried to add mementos or take pictures or stare for too long.
It was also bad for business.
It’s one thing to know which bar in Dayton became a place of refuge for dozens of people who rushed inside to escape a massacre. It’s another thing to mark it.
The bar is in the city’s Oregon Historic District, where the architecture hearkens back to the 19th century and the name is a puzzle — no one knows why it’s called “Oregon.”
Even now, anyone sitting inside having a beer and talking football can see tourists stop for selfies outside. Terror tourists. These folks don’t usually come in and buy drinks.
There are a few tributes in the area. Some wreaths here. A poem or a ribbon there.
There’s talk of creating a permanent memorial at the end of the street where a 24-year-old gunman killed nine people and injured 27 more in a matter of seconds, but for now there’s a small exhibit a few blocks away at the Dayton International Peace Museum.
Chris Borland, a 28-year-old NFL star-turned-peace activist, is trying to help his hometown by making sure more people know about the museum and its mission to reduce violence.
“You can’t read into what the Founding Fathers thought,” he said, “but you couldn’t kill 10 people in 30 seconds with a musket. … It’s time to do something.”
That’s what mourners chanted every time a politician took the stage at a wake the day after the shooting, “Do! Some! Thing!”
Nick Hrkman, an Oregon District regular, was at that vigil.
He also was at a rally hosted by comedian Dave Chappelle, who lives nearby.
Hrkman wrote about it in a sprawling essay published in the Dayton Daily News. It closed with these words:
“As tens of thousands of friends and neighbors made their way home, groups of volunteers formed to collect the litter left behind. On my way out, I saw a woman with a broken leg use her crutches to … push trash into piles for the volunteers to gather.
“By morning, this place would be clean. Normal, even.”
Maybe.
It was clear from walking around with him for a while that they’re working on a new normal.
Anyway, for now, Tom Archdeacon, a longtime Daily News columnist, is watching his town come together.
“Hugs are the new handshake in Dayton,” he said over lunch.
What do you do? You take action
El Paso survivor Benny McGuire and Dayton activist Chris Borland stick with me.
McGuire can describe the Walmart attack in horrifying detail.
He says the #ElPasoStrong signs help.
“On a personal level, it means so much to me,” McGuire said. “Does it suck for the situation? Yeah. Because I wouldn’t put this on my worst enemy. But it just shows me that where hate and division were supposed to come about, it’s just made our community even stronger.”
For Borland, who has dedicated his life to service since retiring from the NFL after just one season, being “#strong” meant returning to his hometown to help tackle the problem.
He’s convinced there’s room for responsible gun owners and pacifists to work together. Until then, it’s about baby steps.
“I think if you’re a person who wasn’t there but feels at a loss over the inaction and the seemingly routine occurrence of mass shootings,” he said, “the thing to do is to personally take action.” Don’t wait.
Reach out to Moms Demand Action or the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence or the March for Our Lives or Giffords: Courage to Stop Gun Violence or any like-minded group.
Ask them how you can help. “The problem is universal,” Borland said. “That means that there are efforts to solve these problems that are also universal. Really, just get involved.”
Volunteer at a church or a school or a senior center. Start a civics club or a book club. Write to your congressman. Write to your senator. Write to the editor of this paper.
Express your fears. Share solutions. Create community.
But don’t wait for the next tragedy. Do something now.
That’s strength. Remember, action is the new “#strong.”