From My Desk: Jan. 28

1-28-26

By Lauren Royce, Editor

The other week, I pondered how much more killing would have to happen in America before the nightmare actually reaches its conclusion. I also wondered who specifically may have to die in order for that to happen. But I’ve realized there will be no perfect victim, and this mindset is that of a domestic violence victim. If the exact right set of circumstances occurs, we will be let go. We just need the exact right words, the correct blood to be spilled, something so unequivocally evil that can be universally agreed upon as “wrong,” our abusers will stand down. This is fiction.
If I wrote a script about the downfall of a nation in a dystopia for my screenwriting class using the last names Good and Pretti for my characters, it’d be considered too on-the-nose. But here we are, after a white man who worked as a nurse with veterans was filled with an entire magazine clip. Already dead, but still being hole-punched. Who could be next after this?
I remember learning about domestic violence in middle-ish school when the health teacher put on the 1996 film “No One Would Tell” based on the 1991 killing of 14-year-old Amy Carnevale by her boyfriend Jamie Fuller, 16. Leading up to this, the girl’s friends saw her bruised back, her suddenly timid and skittish behaviors and did nothing past questioning her. Her body is pulled from the bottom of a lake in a garbage bag as her mother sobs over her. The classroom was nearly silent, tears were being wiped and even the smart alec boys didn’t make a peep. Boyfriend goes to prison, and the friends stand before a judge who tells them that being a bystander who does nothing is the wrong thing to do in cases like this. The lights came on, the bell rang, and that’s all I remember.
This coupled with the self-defense training just for us girls two days a year in gym class sent a message: It’ll be you. And in the event that it is, you must fight back.
America is a bruised up girl whose “friends” decide it’s none of their business anyhow, “boy” is government-sanctioned violence and Minnesota is the judge who is tired of this repeated event. What’s that got to do with us in Pennsylvania? Everything. We’re all people. We are being mistreated and things are not right. But we don’t have to act like the movie is already over— far from it. America has a chance to be born anew. How that happens is up to we, the people.