This is Part 3 in a three-part series featuring content from Variety magazine's special issue on Violence & Entertainment, which encourages a variety of voices to speak up and address possible solutions to this national problem. See Part 1 and Part 2.
Do videogames inspire violent behavior? Absolutely not, says developer
newtown
From Cleveland.com: The North Royalton Early Childhood PTA and students from the Early Childhood Center provide some community service for their peers in Newtown, CT
By Becki Cohn-Vargas, Not In Our School Director
After the massacre in Newtown, the National PTA launched a campaign to send snowflakes to Sandy Hook School. The result: thousands of snowflakes from all over the United States were delivered as a message of empathy and blanketed the grieving community.
Slate: "Productive" Response to Kansas Hate Group
When the Westboro Baptist Church hate group announced that it would picket the funerals of the Newtown, CT shooting victims, many people were filled with outrage. In response, the cyberhacking group Anonymous hacked the website and Twitter pages of the WBC in a form of revenge. Slate writer Will Oremus states that there have been more productive responses to the Westboro Baptist Church, particularly the pro-tolerance counter protest of Gunn High School. This counter protest was effective because it worked to empower the students and strengthen the school’s values of acceptance and tolerance. Slate also featured our video, “Gunn High School Sings Away Hate Group,” below.
Talking to Your Kids About Newtown
From Oak Creek Patch: About 100 people attended a candlelight vigil Sunday night at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin for victims of the Newtown school shootings. Credit: Mark Schaaf
Oak Creek Stands for NewtownMass shootings are happening all too often across the country, and no one knows this better than the residents of those communities affected.
The residents of Oak Creek, WI, understand the pain these shootings cause—just four months ago, a white supremacist shot and killed six people at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin.
That’s why Oak Creek stood with Newtown, CT, on Sunday, holding a vigil to remember the 26 people killed in a shooting rampage at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday. Read the full story about the vigil on Oak Creek Patch.
In communities across the country, people are joining together for vigils to remember the twenty-six people lost to mass violence on Dec. 14 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Twenty of those killed were six- to seven-year-old children; the adults were their teachers and school leaders.
President Obama joins a vigil Sunday evening in Newtown, CT. People are gathering from Bangor, Maine to Tucson, Arizona; Lubbock, Texas to Berkeley, California.
Why did this happen? Why Aurora, Tucson, Portland, Oak Creek, and cities like Oakland where young people are lost to violence almost every week? The answers may be different and hard, but the asking of the question is imperative if we want it to stop.
As the political battles swirl and blame gaming clouds our ability to seek solutions, the loss of these very little children may compel us to agree on one simple message and quest:
Stop the violence in our country.