Name: Wally Condos

Social Justice Group: 2023-2024, Gun Violence Epidemic: NYC and USA

Date of Fieldwork: January 30, 2024

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Donna Dees

Type of Fieldwork: [69]

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?:

Our fieldwork with Donna Dees, is definetly going to be really helpful. She has a very cool story, and a warming personality. She started the million mom march, which is a protest against gun violence affecting kids. She made it primarily for moms but high schoolers, college students, dads, single people, and so on were also welcome. She started it because at the time in 1999 a white supremacist shot kids at a daycare that were around her kids age. She said the gun industry tried finding ways to market guns to people who aren’t normally the type of person you would expect to have a gun, for example she said she went to a gun store and to “appeal a gun to her” they offered her a pink one.

She also shared with us some horrific stats like, 76% percent of school shooters get their guns from unlocked guns in their homes or from a relative. Gun death statistics have risen since covid. Guns are now the #1 cause of death for kids and teens.. She also mentioned how New York has pretty good gun laws, and if the rest of the country brought their gun laws up to California’s and New York’s level, it would greatly reduce our country’s gun deaths. She is not against ownership of gun though. Another crazy stat she shared was that UK banned guns in the 1990s and the law passed with not too much backlash. The only Scot killed by a gun last year was not in Scotland but he was killed in Salt Lake City, Utah. She also gave us some strategies to help fight against gun violence like, organizing, bold ideas, and persistence. And all of this is just a little bit of what she said, all in all, she taught us a lot.

Questions and answers:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jDLyKGG-0hy3pJMgItjq7BnIjbpuCSYBn5g1TVqATZ8/edit