The main auditorium of the Rosza Center was filled to the brim on Wednesday, Feb. 21, at 7:30 p.m. as Michigan Tech and community members gathered to listen to Reverend Sharon Washington Risher deliver a lecture on social justice. Reverend Risher’s lecture was themed around gun violence and how human-centered policies are important to reducing the escalation of gun violence.
She focused her lecture on the Charleston, South Carolina shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, 2015, which claimed the lives of nine people, including her mother, two cousins and a childhood friend. Her mother, Ethel Lee Lance, was the church’s sexton.
Since that horrific tragedy, Sharon has been very outspoken about the nation’s gun laws and is one of the national spokespersons for the grassroots advocacy groups Everytown and Moms Demand Gun Sense. Her talks cover, among others, her personal experience of losing loved ones to gun violence, race, racism and hate in America, as well as the path to forgiveness and an offering of hope for tomorrow.
Relating how she became an activist, Reverend Risher said, “our experiences of our lives shape who we are and what we become”. In her highly emotional and teary speech, she admonished the audience that “we have the duty to have the conversation about race and have that conversation over and over.”
Criticizing usual government responses to instances of gun violence, Reverend Risher said “we need more than the government’s thoughts and prayers.” She asked all citizens of the United States to begin to safeguard citizens’ security. Concluding her speech, she stated that “we have this great country and we must do all that is needed to make it safe for all.”
Gun violence annually kills and injures many people in the United States. Among those who died from gun violence are historically powerful people like Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Presidents James Abram Garfield, William McKinley, Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt also suffered gun wounds during their presidency.
According to the Mass Shooting Tracker, there were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015. According to the Gun Violence Archive, about 13,286 people were killed, and 26,819 people were injured in the US by firearms in 2015. There were also 64 school shootings in 2015. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that, of all the murders in the US in 2012, 60% were by firearm compared with 31% in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and 10% in the UK. Gun ownership rights are enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, and lobby groups like the National Rifle Association advocate for its enforcement.
The event is part of the Rozsa’s Van Evera Distinguished Lecture Series and the Social Justice Lecture Series in coordination with the Center for Diversity and Inclusion.
