Being angry is better than feeling nothing at all. To lose the outrage is to lose what makes the world warmer and unites us as a planet.

Nothing was ever changed in the world because people waited until the right time, and were polite about it. The exact opposite is true. George W. Bush, Jr. did not wait to call 9/11 what it was until America was done grieving. MLK certainly did not wait for the grieving period to be over after Selma, and after five Civil rights activists were killed? No, both men told it as it was and didn’t beat around the bush. They informed the public and told the truth. No Bull about it, evil is evil and shootings are mass murders.

Change only happens if the people are willing to give a name to a terror and a face to the victim. You can only stop something if you actively speak against it, and that inability to take a stand–to back up what you are saying–is why people are becoming indifferent to mass shootings. They tweet about it, and change their status profile for a few days, and then a week later it’s all but forgotten to the average person.

Edmund Burke, an 18th century philosopher who believed in changing the world for the better, is often famously quoted for saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”

Doing nothing is not doing nothing. It encourages the aggressor, the attacker, the terror inflictor to do more harm because that see an easy way. The evil in this world is helped along when nothing is done to stop it.

Hundreds, of thousands each year are murdered in the United States. The world cannot let themselves become desensitized to the horrors that the few are willing to commit. But everyday, it seems, a new mass shooting, a vanacide, a bombing occurs. Las Vegas, Manhattan, Sutherland. Just last Thursday a shooter walked into Aztec High School in New Mexico and killed two students–we didn’t even hear about it. When did that happen? When did a high school shooting become “old news?”

We can’t let indifference happen. We can’t ever just turn away and just say, “Oh, well. Another mass killing today. Let’s watch Stranger Things.” Stranger things is now our new normal. But in the face of this “normal” we are going to have to finds what’s left of our humanity. Is this the world we are going to settle for, the world that are parents and our grandparents and their parents before them left for us? Or can we make a change. If so we must start by refusing to be complacent, to refuse to be another brain-numbed  face in the crowd. Then we must make a change where and where we can, at home, in our small town, here, now. That’s the world, the place I want to live in can’t chang las vegas make eaton my town, I will not become numb to evil.   

Just because a horrendous crime happens more and more we must stay aware of what it means and do what we can to never forget, but to change us for the better. A parade of lights brought us as a community together, a young teenage girl was diagnosed with brain cancer and we as a community raised money for her. Football as a team beat their number one rival, who was also number one seed. Volleyball won their fifth consecutive state championship.

All of this was accomplished by people in our town. People who were willing and strong enough to do something, made the world a different and better place, some in other ways than others.

And it’s this difference that we must create to fend off indifference.