Op-Ed

*The following cover letter and op-ed were written as final deliverables for a semester-long nonprofit advocacy campaign project for my PA 598 graduate course in spring 2021. My group consisted of three team members—myself, Alisha Amin, and Jannat Dola. The role I held within our group included writing this cover letter and op-ed.

Cover Letter

Our group selected to write an op-ed, targeting The News & Observer, because a substantial component and primary strategy of our mission is education and spreading awareness around gun violence. In 1996, The News & Observer won a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. Therefore, this media outlet allows us to disseminate pertinent information to the public related to gun violence prevention, as well as focus on our coalition-building efforts with MomsRising and the NC Council of Churches. We hope that an op-ed will extend our outreach more broadly, given that our capacity is still relatively low for social media engagement—an area we hope to improve in the coming years. MomsRising, an organization we intend to partner with, has 68.7K followers on Twitter, whereas our 501(c)(3) comparatively has 1,150 followers and our 501(c)(4)—NCGV Action Fund—76 followers on Twitter. The specific topic we are concerned with is safe storage of firearms to prevent gun violence of vulnerable groups, such as children or those affected by mental illness. An example of our recent community engagement through press coverage is this podcast radio interview from February 8, 2021: “North Carolinians Against Gun Violence Researcher Sara Smith on gun violence as a public health epidemic.”

Opinion: NC should increase its safe storage of firearms to keep guns out of vulnerable hands

By North Carolinians Against Gun Violence Staff

May 3, 2021

            The United States has a severe problem with gun violence, and it is only getting worse. The year 2019 in North Carolina saw 1,397 gun deaths, 116 of which involved children and teens (ages 0-19), according to The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. Additionally, 56 percent of these gun deaths were suicides. Despite a federal law in place, the state of North Carolina does not mandate a locking device with the sale of a firearm. North Carolina must do better in protecting its residents by increasing child access prevention and implementing safe storage requirements for gun owners. Safe storage encompasses three parts: guns in the home are unloaded, locked, and stored apart from ammunition. Giffords Law Center outlines that current state law in North Carolina dictates criminal liability in certain instances where a minor accesses a firearm and has it in public or uses it, but we need even stronger barriers to entry. Gun access should not even remotely be on the radar of our youth.

            In 2020, our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, North Carolinians Against Gun Violence (NCGV), released the Safe North Carolina Report 2020 in order to address these concerns and emphasize that “every firearm injury and death is preventable.” NCGV does not seek to enforce rigid gun control; rather, we argue that gun violence is a public health crisis and must be treated as such. The call for these safe storage policies extends far beyond partisan politics. We are asking for an honest assessment of the shortcomings of public safety, protection, and human dignity within our state.

            According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center’s Means Matter Campaign identifies access to firearms as a risk factor for suicide and firearms discharged in youth suicide often are the possession of the parents. Between 2008 and 2017, the youth suicide rate almost doubled in North Carolina, according to North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics data as reported in the North Carolina Child Health Report Card 2019.

            Our bottom line: We do not have to choose to live this way. Our country does not have to top the charts in terms of mass shootings worldwide. We can mitigate the risks of firearms falling into unauthorized or vulnerable hands, especially children and those suffering from mental distress or illness. President Biden has declared gun violence in the U.S. “an epidemic,” since the shootings this year in Georgia and Colorado. NCGV’s 2021 legislative agenda regarding gun violence prevention lays out our plan forward, featuring a state-wide safe firearm storage campaign. Funding for this campaign would allow for education and the distribution of free gun locks. Our partner, the NC Council of Churches, stands behind our objectives to reduce gun violence in North Carolina. Will you join us in the fight?

North Carolinians Against Gun Violence (NCGV) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to gun violence prevention through education, enactment and enforcement. Learn more here.

Teaching Philosophy

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

As an educator, I believe there are many strategies to effective teaching but that ultimately certain characteristics are fundamental to engaging students and connecting well. I strive to be a teacher who listens earnestly, exercises compassion and understanding with my students, and meets students where they are. While it is essential to hold students accountable and to a high standard of excellence, I also have learned from my prior teaching experiences that we often have to adjust our expectations in order to reach students and inspire them to their individual levels of growth. This perspective values a process-driven, student-centered learning atmosphere.

Each student enters the classroom with differing needs, strengths, fears, and aspirations. My job is to get to know every student and foster an environment that is inclusive, safe, comfortable, and fun. Education is a dynamic, interactive field that requires catering to a variety of learning styles and preferences, differentiating methods and techniques to appeal to a wide range. Diversity is at the heart of learning, and I seek to celebrate and honor the dignity of every student. Within the school environment more broadly, teachers work in conjunction with one another, collaborating to best serve students. I am a teacher who wants to exercise mindfulness towards my colleagues’ ideas and struggles, building a coalition of empathy and dedication to progress.

I believe professionalism as a teacher is a high priority, and I strive to model a genuine character for my students that entails a commitment to integrity, humility, and kindness. In a language-learning context, particularly, my objective is to allow students to try and make mistakes. Speaking, writing, reading comprehension, and listening in a foreign language is challenging and at times frustrating for students. However, it is a beautiful, enriching skill to know other languages and connect with people from other countries. I want students to feel empowered and confident in the language-learning space because without that foundation of security it is difficult to grow and improve.

“A los niños me ha dado y sólo para ellos guardo mi salud y mis bríos. […] El futuro de los niños es siempre hoy. Mañana será tarde. […] Todo lo di, ya nada llevo.” -Gabriela Mistral

Read more on my teaching experiences abroad on my “Teaching Across Cultures” site, created as part of my language assistant renewal at my school.

Diversity Statement

“[…] the heartbeat of anti-racism is confession, is admission, is acknowledgement, is the willingness to be vulnerable, is the willingness to identify the times in which we are being racist, is to be willing to diagnose ourselves and our country and our ideas and our policies.” -Ibram X. Kendi

Recognition of my white privilege and socioeconomic advantages are mere first steps in a lifelong journey of actively working towards anti-racism, accessibility, and inclusivity in the classroom and beyond. Creating and maintaining a safe space for all students to engage begins with me.

Walking with students from different cultures, backgrounds, and identities of all sorts requires a wholehearted commitment to seeking understanding and adjusting accordingly to meet students where they are at. As a white individual, I will never understand the unrelenting fear and grave injustices faced by people of color and other disenfranchised groups.

However, in order to access those muscles of empathy, I must also consider times in which I have felt like an outsider myself, such as living alone in a foreign country and being a second language learner. While my experiences by no means compare to those who have encountered racial or ethnic discrimination, they at least give me a point of connection to this concept of otherness and feeling misunderstood.

On a personal level, in practice this has looked like entering into social justice exercises in new environments on service-learning trips (like a privilege walk) and staying in the discomfort, educating myself through the vast literature on disparities within our country, and genuinely reflecting on my inherent biases. I cannot just say I want to show up for marginalized communities; I have to actually follow through in my thoughts and actions. As someone who navigates surroundings having been born into the “majority culture” in the U.S., defensiveness is a strongly harmful attitude. A hardened or ignorant heart towards race relations only perpetuates white fragility (DiAngelo, 2011). Instead, I choose to be a woman and professional who understands the great unfortune that is these existing realities and fights against them.

There is great value in discovering we are wrong about a preconception or have made a mistake and need to express enough humility, maturity, and integrity to confess and move forward. I have come to learn that much of diversity, equity, and inclusion is centered on this acknowledgment, as Ibram X. Kendi teaches us in the quote above. It is not the job of those who are displaced within society to teach us; rather, we must be proactive in our own learning processes.

As a nonprofit professional in mission-driven work environments surrounded by passionate coworkers, I anticipate and expect DEI to be the source of our work. Particularly in my field of refugee resettlement and humanitarian work, I must always keep in mind how my own privilege has benefited me in systemic ways that have overlooked and harmed those of minority groups.

5 areas I see fit to sustain myself in this work include:

Accountability

• With friends, family members, and colleagues; ultimately, taking ownership myself of the responsibility to engage meaningfully in the DEI journeying process on a consistent basis in my own life, rather than expecting or burdening those who have themselves suffered from these inequities to lead me in the work

Education

• Reading books, attending professional development workshops, listening to podcasts; going beyond the bare minimum to ensure educating myself is woven into my daily routines

Writing

• Journaling and reflection through guided questions to better understand myself and how my own identity informs my work

Imperfection

• As a perfectionist, this is a challenging but necessary reminder; I must allow myself to feel uncomfortable, to make mistakes, to share openly, and to “pass the mic” so that people who have had their voices diminished by our society may be seen and heard

Advocacy

• Fighting alongside people of color and marginalized groups; using my own power in society to raise up those who have been cast down; supporting nonprofit organizations—financially and through volunteering—with missions of service towards empowerment and justice