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October 14, 2015 Page 7 O PINION Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. How To Prevent A School Shooter: Start with building a caring community d avid s oleil Imagine you are an 8-year old student in elementary school. Your teacher tells you, “Today, we are having a lockdown drill.” She talks in cryptic lan- guage explaining that if something bad happens at school, she wants everyone to be safe. You practice hiding in the closet with all of the other students and you sit “criss-cross applesauce” while the teacher bars the door. Or maybe you have a special cabinet to hide in. One of my friends told me how proud her daughter was about her hiding space in a cabinet for lockdown. This scenario plays out every day in our schools. But what are we really teaching our community? We are teaching parents, teachers, and students to live in constant fear for their lives because “the shooter” is coming. Not since the Cold War have we surrounded our children in such an environment of reactive fear where they literally hide in the closet. “Duck and cover” used to be the rallying cry from Bert the Turtle for students to dive under by their desks because Rus- sia could drop an atomic bomb on the United States any minute. School shootings are serious and complex is- sues. There is no single key that can unlock a solution for our communi- ties. (Can we collectively be done with “silver bullets” please?) As a founder of a K-12 school myself, and a consultant in Nonviolence Leadership, I have some per- spectives that could be helpful as schools and communities wrestle with how to address the potential threat of violence. Let’s back up, long before a shooter shows up anywhere, and ask, how is our community caring for each other? How are we taking time to validate the inherent worth and dignity of every person in our learning community? So often, we get caught up in our day-to-day jobs as teachers, parents and ad- ministrators that we forget about how important relationships are to our community. Strong communities are built upon trust, caring and love. These interpersonal relationships are your community safety net when issues come up and they take significant time and attention. It’s much like fundraising in the nonprofit world. The wisdom of fundraising says, “If you are go- ing to ask for money one month each year, you must spend the other 11 months building relation- ships.” The same thing is true for community building. Invest time every day in building strong, car- ing relationships that will support the community in times of crisis. This strategy is not about “shooter management.” It is about “shooter prevention” long before anyone picks up a gun. Martin Luther King Jr. said that “A riot is the language of the un- heard.” I would say the same thing in this context, that school shoot- ings are the language of the un- heard. Many times, school shoot- ers are also students. So let us be intentional that our schools can be “communities that hear.” Consid- er how your school community can open lines of communication. Let’s allow students to talk and al- low them to feel. Let’s allow stu- dents to discuss what’s going on in our world without having to have a test, a homework assignment, a grade or a learning outcome. You can’t measure caring with a rubric and you won’t test your way to a safer school. We spend weeks preparing every student to take standardized tests. Can we give some attention to validating the humanity and feelings of each student? Even better, can we fo- cus our time on building a loving community instead of so much testing? How many shootings could we prevent if students in de- spair felt their school was a place of caring rather than cold indiffer- ence? If we do not make time for this important work, we will con- tinue to hear the tragic “language of the unheard.” Two years ago, Antoinette Tuff stopped a school shooter who car- ried an AK-47 and 500 rounds of ammunition in my hometown of Decatur, Ga. She didn’t use a gun. She used much more powerful weapons: listening, empathy and love. No one was hurt. No one was killed, not even the perpetra- tor. She is a living example of the power of love, empathy and non- violence. What if we trained every teach- er in empathic communication or Nonviolent Communication? What if instead of lockdown drills, we had empathy drills? In- stead of teaching students to hide in a closet, what if we taught our students and teachers to reach out to each other, every day, and help each other when people are sad or hurting? What if instead of living in reactive fear of death that we engaged in the pro-active, life-af- firming love of building a caring community? The issues of school shootings are as complex as the solutions. Building a loving, caring commu- nity is an important solution that can catch students in despair and bring them back into the commu- nity long before they decide to pick up a gun. Antoinette Tuff was a single unarmed person who stopped a tragedy with love. Imagine a whole school of people like An- toinette. We would never hide in the closet again. David Soleil is a school founder in Atlanta, a teacher, and a train- er in nonviolence. Distributed by PeaceVoice. Expanding Healthcare Coverage for Everyone Every state can make progress m arian W right e delman Recently released data from the U.S. Census Bu- reau shows the Affordable Care Act is working and helping get people health coverage. This is a welcome stark contrast to census data showing children remain our poorest age group and the younger they are the poorer they are. Clearly the ACA has had pos- itive effects on the uninsured. There were 8.8 million more peo- ple insured in 2014 than in 2013 and the percentage of people with- out health insurance coverage de- creased from 13.3 percent to 10.4 percent. Nearly 1 million more children gained health coverage, but the overall rate of coverage for children was at a lower rate than seniors. Adult gains in coverage mean extra gains for children because when parents are covered children are more likely to be covered and by receive needed preventive care too. The high rate of coverage for children is also evidence that Medicaid and CHIP are working for children and should be pre- served as we work to expand protections for children in private coverage. Although progress was made for large numbers of children, some lag behind. His- panic children were more likely to be uninsured than children of other races and ethnicities and the uninsured rate for noncitizen children in 2014 was 20.8 per- cent—about 3.5 times greater than the uninsured rate for native-born citizen children. Assuring univer- sal coverage for children, requires providing coverage to undocu- mented children and to citizen children of undocumented parents who fear deportation if they seek health coverage for their children. This summer, California took an historic leap towards providing health coverage to every child – the culmination of more than a de- cade of relentless advocacy by the Children’s Defense Fund’s Cali- fornia office and other child health and immigrant advocates. Starting May 1, more than 170,000 undocumented children will gain access to health cov- erage they need to survive and thrive and grow up ready to con- tribute fully to California’s work- force and economy. The progress in California reflects a bipartisan recognition that the state is stron- ger when everyone has access to health care including immigrant children and families. California child advocates know the fight is not over and are continuing the “Health for All” ef- fort to ensure all Californians — adults and children — get health coverage. With its recent advances California joins Illinois, Massa- chusetts, New York, Washington State, and Washington, D.C. in covering undocumented children. Every state should do so. States that have taken the Af- fordable Care Act’s option to ex- pand Medicaid to more low- and middle-income adults also saw important strides in 2014. Al- though all 50 states and Washing- ton, D.C. had a decreasing number of uninsured people between 2013 and 2014, the greatest gains were in the states that took the ACA’s option to expand Medicaid. We can increase this good news for all who need health coverage. We need to push hard for Med- icaid expansion in all 50 states and push all states to follow Cal- ifornia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Washington State, and Washington, D.C. in covering un- documented children. The progress made on reducing the number of uninsured people should inspire us to keep going until every child and adult has needed health coverage. Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s De- fense Fund. The Law Offices of Patrick John Sweeney, P.C. Patrick John Sweeney Attorney at Law 1549 SE Ladd, Portland, Oregon Portland: Hillsoboro: Facsimile: (503) 244-2080 (503) 244-2081 (503) 244-2084 Email: Sweeney@PDXLawyer.com