“Guttenberg’s
own Republican Congressman in Ohio, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, has taken $7000 from
the NRA in his short tenure in the House of Representatives and has yet to
grant Jaime’s grandma a meeting so that she can discuss her granddaughter’s
murder.”
Jaime
Guttenberg - Murdered in Parkland - Her Grandmother Speaks Out
commondreams.org
July 9, 2018
How is a grandma supposed to react when all NRA money pours into
the pockets of the elected officials that are supposed to care about her
grandchildren? In Guttenberg’s case, the grandma gets busy.
“It
never gets easier,” Ethel Guttenberg’s voice faltered as she spoke of her
granddaughter, Jaime. Jaime and 16 others were murdered at Stoneman
Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida this past Valentine’s
Day.
Guttenberg’s
voice grew stronger as she announced to the annual
conference of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in San
Jose, “It will get easier when some of these terrible people in Congress get
fired.”
Guttenberg,
a long-time member of NOW, is no stranger to tragedy. Her son, Michael, a New
York physician and FDNY first responder on September 11, 2001, died from cancer linked to airborne toxins he
was exposed to as he struggled to save lives in the aftermath of the deadliest
terror attack on U.S. soil.
Then,
sixteen and a half years later, Guttenberg’s granddaughter died at the scene of
a whole different kind of terror attack: The now familiar terrorist attack
perpetrated by homegrown mass shooters. And since that day, the victims of the
Parkland shooting have refused to fade quietly into the background.
Something
happened at Douglas High School that made this shooting different from all the
others. Guttenberg told a mesmerized audience that something about the 18th
mass shooting of 2018 pulled the victims together and motivated their outreach.
Something has made the survivors response different from the shootings in Orlando
or Las Vegas.
Guttenberg thinks it’s the Stoneman Douglas community. They
weren’t little kids like the tiny children slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary
School and they weren’t virtual strangers like the attendees of a concert or a
nightclub. The Stoneman Douglas High School kids knew each other, they were
already connected, and Guttenberg surmises that this familiarity empowered them
to speak out.
Guttenberg
herself can’t stay silent. She doesn’t want any more grandparents to bury their
grandchildren because Congress is afraid to act. Guttenberg can’t stay home and
stay quiet about her grief. Though she tears up every time she talks about
Jaime, she just keeps talking - because she believes, “These murderers need to
be stopped.” And when she talks about murderers, she means the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the
members of congress whose campaigns the organization finances. Guttenberg told
her audience that she doesn’t think much of the shooter: a man she says “wasn’t
even old enough to buy a six shooter but could buy an assault rifle.” No,
Guttenberg explained, “Truthfully, I don’t give a damn about him. I do blame
all the Congressmen who didn’t do anything.”
Guttenberg’s
own Republican Congressman in Ohio, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, has taken $7000 from
the NRA in his short tenure in the House of Representatives and has yet to
grant Jaime’s grandma a meeting so that she can discuss her granddaughter’s
murder. While $7000 over three election cycles sets no records for the
NRA, Wenstrup’s counterpart in the House of Representatives who speaks for the
Cincinnati area where Guttenberg works, Rep. Steve Chabot, has taken $70,950
from the group. The Ohio House delegation has a whopping $243,591 in
their combined coffers from the nation’s largest gun lobby. That’s just the
House of Representatives from Ohio. It doesn’t include totals for the state’s
U.S. Senators, Governor, or State House lawmakers. How’s a grandma supposed to
react when all that money pours into the pockets of the elected officials that
are supposed to care about her grandchildren?
In
Guttenberg’s case, the grandma gets busy.
Not new
to activism, a long-time member of NOW, Guttenberg’s devoted herself to the
causes of reproductive choice, gay rights, and now, Guttenberg says, she’s
taking on guns. Long-time friend and NOW board member, Beth Corbin, shares
Guttenberg’s desire to make the U.S. a safer place to go to school, concerts
and movie theaters. Corbin spoke lovingly of Guttenberg’s newest fight and
“absolutely supports” her efforts. “It’s particularly poignant that she now has
to deal with this gun violence,” Corbin remarked. “The NRA didn’t know who they
were tangling with when they allowed Ethel’s granddaughter to get murdered and
engaged her in this fight.”
Guttenberg
said that she recently visited Jaime’s grave for the first time since the
funeral. She told her audience in San Jose that after speaking with her
granddaughter about everything that had gone on since her murder, she asked if
she was doing okay. Guttenberg said that as she walked away, she heard Jaime’s
voice in her heart say, “You go, Grandma!”
Her
entire NOW audience applauded in agreement.
This work
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
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Pat LaMarche is
an author, activist and advocate. She is the author of "Left Out In
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new novel, The Magic Diary, is due out in late spring.
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