Bee Opinionated: Another Sacramento shooting + Protest is patriotism + AAPI Changemakers
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Robin Epley here once more, with The Bee Editorial Board. While it was nice to have another short work week, America’s gun epidemic didn’t take any time off — especially on Monday, when another spate of mass shootings rocked the nation and Sacramento was once again on that unfortunate list.
Metro columnist Melinda Henneberger wrote about the Highland Park mass shooting, which was in no way hindered by Illinois’ strict gun laws — laws that gun rights absolutists already considered too authoritarian.
“Maybe those gun owners so ardent that they seem to want to marry their weapons should be allowed to do so, because love is love,” Henneberger wrote. “But when they claim that blue states are denying their right to carry anywhere, anytime, that unfortunately isn’t true.”
Closer to home, four were injured and one man died in a shooting in downtown Sacramento early Monday morning, just a few blocks from where a mass shooting occured in April around the same time of day.
Assistant opinion editor Yousef Baig wrote a moving tribute to Greg Najee Grimes, a 31-year-old former football star at Inderkum High School who was now an assistant coach at his alma mater. He had recently paid off his college and car loans, and had just gone into escrow on his first home.
“For some, Grimes will ascend into folklore as another lost son of the city. For others, he will become a symbol of a broken society’s toxic relationship with guns and the systemic deprivation of humanity that allows fleeting evil to squeeze the trigger in the direction of others,” Baig wrote.
No matter where you live, the Fourth of July was a somber day this year, marred by tragedies that Americans seem to be unable to stop.
The Revolution Will Be Televised
A group of protesters flooded onto Interstate 5 in downtown Sacramento last week, rallying against the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn nearly 50 years of precedent and womens’ bodily autonomy under Roe v. Wade. While some Sacramentans saw the protest as disruptive, I saw it as a natural extension of the Founding Fathers’ revolutionary spirit. What could possibly be more patriotic on the Fourth of July than disruption and expressing one’s outrage at a tyrannical government?
“This is a generation plagued by war, recession, institutionalized racism and misogyny, that is enduring the rapid removal of rights previous generations once held sacred. I believe these protesters hold much more in common with American revolutionaries than anyone setting off fireworks. They deserve our thanks and gratitude on this day of all days — when we celebrate the dream of what America could be.”
Don’t Forget to Nominate
Help us honor AAPI leaders by nominating community members who have invigorated Sacramento with their vision, authenticity and creativity in The Bee’s inaugural AAPI Changemakers project, in partnership with the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program.
You can find more information, as well as a submission form, here.
Opinion of the Week
“...If my in-laws had had a ranch in Big Sky Country instead of a ranch-style house in a suburb of Trenton, New Jersey, maybe I’d be more inclined to see this getaway to Gilead as no big deal. But entitled behavior — one set of rules for me, and another for everyone else — just isn’t the kind of brass that Democrats want to see more of.” — Henneberger on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s trip to Montana, a place California has banned state-funded travel to, “as one of the red states too discriminatory to LGBTQ+ people to deserve any of our tax dollars,” as she so delightfully put it.
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Remember that kindness costs nothing,
Robin Epley
