On Freedom Part 1

I was in Amsterdam when I got a call from a magazine editor wanting me to do a short piece about gun violence in the U.S. “In 2020,” she began by way of background, “firearms became the leading cause of death for children in the United States. That trend continued in 2021 and looking at the numbers in August of 2022 it looks like that’ll be the case too.”

“Oh wow.” I said, not because I was shocked, but mostly as a form of active listening that would allow the conversation to continue. I was not shocked. I also didn’t want to go too deep into meditation on the deaths of children during a work call. I thought it might be impolite.

Perhaps she didn’t either because we then quickly moved into talking about reporting logistics, assignment calendar, word counts, interview dates, source-gathering. I had been in Europe for just over two weeks. It had been about that long since I thought about the possibility of my children dying due to a bullet.

To take the call I had stepped away from a dinner and game night with family friends. When I came back downstairs, I mentioned the thing about guns becoming the leading cause of death for children in the US. My friends were Black ex-pats. Bronx born and raised. They had given up on America, and it could be said they hadn’t done so without really trying. They had been activists, they had protested, made art, run a school for the liberation of children. They had given more to America than America had given them for sure. And they still decided at some point that it…