Tuesday Reads

Frederick Carl Frieseke

Good Morning!!

Before I get to the depressing news, here’s something positive: Boston suddenly has a Black woman as acting mayor.

WBUR: Kim Janey Becomes First Black Woman To Lead Boston.

Kim Janey shattered two historic barriers when she became acting mayor of Boston Monday evening: She is both the first woman and the first person of color to lead the city.

Janey, a Black woman, was elevated from city council president to acting mayor immediately after Marty Walsh resigned as mayor to take the job of U.S. labor secretary. His resignation came swiftly following the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of his nomination.

“It’s hard to overstate the significance of inaugurating a woman of color as acting mayor of Boston,” said Amanda Hunter, executive director of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which advocates for women in politics. “We have exclusively had white, male mayors leading this city for nearly 200 years,” despite Boston becoming increasingly more diverse. For at least two decades, most residents have been non-white or Hispanic. Women also outnumber men in Boston, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Many area residents are celebrating Janey’s elevation and its significance, including Deanna Cook, who met Janey when she had a problem at her high school in 2017. Cook and her twin sister kept getting detention for wearing hair extensions, which are popular among Black girls but violated a dress code set by predominantly white administrators.

“It’s hard to overstate the significance of inaugurating a woman of color as acting mayor of Boston,” said Amanda Hunter, executive director of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which advocates for women in politics. “We have exclusively had white, male mayors leading this city for nearly 200 years,” despite Boston becoming increasingly more diverse. For at least two decades, most residents have been non-white or Hispanic. Women also outnumber men in Boston, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Lucy May Stanton

Many area residents are celebrating Janey’s elevation and its significance, including Deanna Cook, who met Janey when she had a problem at her high school in 2017. Cook and her twin sister kept getting detention for wearing hair extensions, which are popular among Black girls but violated a dress code set by predominantly white administrators.

“We had basically no representation,” Cook said. “We had such difficulty getting the policy turned over, mainly because the people who were in charge didn’t understand and also didn’t care.”

At the time, Janey worked at the nonprofit Massachusetts Advocates for Children. In that role, she argued the ban on hair extensions was discriminatory and helped the Cook sisters change the dress code at the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden.

A few months later, Janey won a seat on the Boston City Council.

Now for the depressing news: It’s happened again. Yesterday, a man walked into a Boulder, CO supermarket and mowed down 10 people with an AR15-type assault rifle. When will Americans wake up and see the need to control access to these powerful weapons?

NBC News: 10 people dead, including police officer, after shooting at Colorado grocery store.

Ten people died, including a police officer, after a gunman walked into a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, Monday and began randomly shooting shoppers. The governor of Colorado, a state that has endured multiple mass shootings, called it an “unspeakable tragedy.”

The officer, Eric Talley, 51, an 11-year veteran of the Boulder police force, was the first officer to arrive at the King Soopers grocery store Monday afternoon, Police Chief Maris Herold said. He had been dispatched after gunfire was reported, she said.

Herold provided no details about the other victims. She said a suspect who was injured in the shooting is in custody. She didn’t provide details about a potential motive.

Earlier, a police commander, Eric Yamaguchi, said there was no ongoing threat. He said it was unclear whether the person had a connection to King Soopers.

Live video from outside the King Soopers showed SWAT vehicles and dozens of police officers, many in tactical gear and camouflage, around the store. Some of its front windows appeared to have been shattered.

A man with his hands behind his back could be seen leaving the store with authorities. It wasn’t clear whether the man, who was wearing no shirt or pants and had blood streaming down his leg, was the person of interest.

The Guardian: ‘I couldn’t help anybody’: Colorado witnesses describe terror as shots rang out.

Sarah Moonshadow, 42, a customer and resident of Boulder, was in the store with her son, Nicholas, on Monday and recounted scenes of pandemonium as gunfire rang out.

“We were at the checkout, and shots just started going off,” Moonshadow told Reuters. “And I said, ‘Nicholas get down.’ And Nicholas ducked. And we just started listening and there, just repetitive shots … and I just said, ‘Nicholas, run.’”

Moonshadow said she tried to help a victim she saw lying on the pavement just outside the store, but her son pulled her away, telling her, “We have to go.” She broke down as she said: “I couldn’t help anybody.” [….]

Quiet, James Jacques Tissot

The bloodshed came less than a week after gun violence last Tuesday that left eight people dead, including six Asian women, at three day spas in and around Atlanta.

Ryan Borowski was inside the store when the shooting began. He told CNN: “I saw terrified faces running towards me and that’s when I turned and ran the other direction.” He said staff helped customers to exit from the back of the store but some people froze. “We ran and I don’t know why other people didn’t and I am sorry that they froze and I just wish that this didn’t happen – I wish I had an answer for why it did,” he said.

Alex Arellano, 35, was working in the meat department at King Soopers when he heard gunshots and saw people running for the exit. “I thought I was going to die,” he told the New York Times, when he heard the shot getting closer. “I’m thinking of my parents, and I was freaking out.” He hid with two other men before escaping through a rear exit.

Just a short time ago, Boulder’s assault weapons ban was lifted after a lawsuit by a gun rights group.

The Washington Post: Boulder’s assault weapons ban, meant to stop mass shootings, was blocked 10 days before grocery store attack.

The Denver Post: Analyzing Colorado’s high rate of mass shootings following the King Soopers killings.

Tom Sullivan last week took to the lectern on the floor of the Colorado House of Representatives and noted that it was the 452nd Friday since his son, Alex, was murdered at the Aurora movie theater shooting. On Monday when he learned of the Boulder King Soopers shooting, he thought of those whose own tallies would now begin.

“There are going to be people who are counting down their Mondays, because they’ve been through this as well,” said Sullivan, a state representative from Aurora.

Colorado has a disproportionate share of survivors of gun violence and of people like Sullivan, whose loved ones were killed. A 2019 analysis by The Denver Post found Colorado had more mass shootings per capita than all but four states. The Census-designated Denver metropolitan statistical area had more school shootings per capita since 1999 than any of the country’s 24 other largest metro areas.

“What we’re looking at now,” said Frank DeAngelis, the principal at Columbine High during the 1999 massacre, “is an issue for society, happening in schools, in Colorado in movie theaters, in churches around the country, airports. We’re a country, a world, of violence.”

Karin Reading, Carl Larsson

He worries about people growing numb, about the reflex Americans have developed to ask, upon hearing of another mass shooting, “How many this time?”

And DeAngelis worries about the collective trauma of a citizenry exposed so repeatedly to tragedy at places like the meat section of a grocery store or the screening of a Batman movie, where Alex Sullivan was killed.

“It’s somewhere that my wife goes to after school, and her students shop there for lunch break. It’s just a very normal setting,” state Sen. Steve Fenberg said of the King Soopers. The store is in his district, and a commercial anchor in south Boulder’s main community gathering spot.

Fenberg Monday, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have thoughts or prayers to offer; mostly anger.”

More stories to check out today:

The New York Times: Senator Ron Johnson has spread misinformation on the virus, the election, the Capitol riot, even Greenland’s greenness.

ProPublica: Mo Brooks Compared Biden’s Election to the Start of the Civil War. Now He Wants a Senate Seat.

The Washington Post: There’s no migrant ‘surge’ at the U.S. southern border. Here’s the data.

Ryan Cooper at The Week: There is no immigration crisis.

The Washington Post: USPS chief DeJoy said to cut post office hours, lengthen delivery times in 10-year plan.

CNN: Former Capitol riot prosecutor’s comments on Trump alarm new no-drama Justice Department.

The New York Times: Justice Dept. Said to Be Weighing Sedition Charges Against Oath Keepers.

The Washington Post: Trump officials hindered at least nine key oversight probes, watchdogs said. Some may finally be released in coming months.

The Washington Post: Thanks to Trump-era covid relief bill, a UFO report may soon be public — and it’ll be big, ex-official says.

As always, this is an open thread. What’s on your mind?