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January 14, 2011

Fitting Memorial For Arizona Shooting Victims

By Daniel Tilson

President Obama will try to use AZ shootings as teaching moment, but we will likely have to advance the full curriculum for ourselves.

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President Obama spoke with power and eloquence at the public memorial service for the victims of last weekend's shootings in Arizona. He said, " I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here, they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us ."

As he grieved with and consoled thousands in person at the University of Arizona's McKale Center in Tuscon, the president was of course also reaching out to the entire nation, helping with the healing process, and framing this terrible tragedy as the teaching moment it must be.

The profoundly sad and sickening irony here is that as Barack Obama reaches within himself for the right thoughts and words to convey, he is himself the ultimate lightning rod for the very kind of blind rage and moral bankruptcy that he and we must now make a last stand against, before our societal order spins any further out of control.

Nineteen innocent human beings were shot in this latest reminder of just how far gone we already are. The specific target was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. While she miraculously survived a gunshot wound to the head, six other precious lives were taken that day, including that of 9-year old Christina Taylor Green, born on 9/11/2001. Christina had recently been elected to her school's student council. One can only imagine the dreams and aspirations swirling through her head as she set off with a neighbor to meet her local congresswoman in person.

As always happens in the wake of such incidents, the individuals, organizations and business interests who continue to stand in the way of effective gun control will keep saying that "people kill people" like Christina Green, not guns. They'll keep pointing to the madness of Christina's murderer, Jared Lee Loughner, dismissing the madness of American gun & ammunition purchase laws; dismissing any responsibility to be taken here by power-seekers who boldly and consistently use provocative, violent rhetoric to recruit and bond with the maddest and most alienated among us.

And so a turning point has presented itself once again for we strong, sane, compassionate people who believe in Peace, Love & Understanding as guiding principles for our society, while also believing in the constitutional rights of citizens to lawfully own registered guns, and in the constitutional rights of citizens to freedom of speech. Are we going to let the madness continue? Or are we now, finally, going to unite in active opposition to the out of control extremes and gross distortions that those constitutional rights have been taken and twisted into by evil alliances of political, media and business interests?

RESOLVED: If we, the vast majority of Americans with firm, moral family values agree that it's okay for those who meet strict sanity and safety requirements to buy a limited variety of guns and ammunition, then that's going to have be good enough. If we agree that public political discourse and debate cannot be allowed to descend into hate-mongering and incitement to violence, than that is the way it is going to be, for all parties, politicians, organizations and media.

We, the vast majority, are done with the viral mistrust, hostility and violence that have infected the American "body politic" in recent years. We are going to organize and peacefully, systematically pull power, money and public platforms away from all who insist on spreading the virus, or allowing the spread of the virus, any further.

Christina Taylor Green's grief-stricken mother speaks for us all.

"I just want her memory to live on, she's a face of hope, a face of change. Stop the violence, stop the hatred."



Authors Website: http://www.youtube.com/user/dptilson

Authors Bio:
Daniel Tilson was born and raised in New York City, a
graduate of Stuyvesant High School, and New York University's Film and Television School, with a double major in Film/TV Production & Broadcast Journalism.

Tilson established his own first company in 1995 and has been writing, producing, directing, shooting and editing informational, promotional and documentary videos ever since -- many for NYC's Labor giant, 1199SEIU, the largest local healthcare workers union in America.

Other clients have included CBS, PBS, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, Service Employees International Union, NYS AFLCIO, New York State Leadership Council, New York University, America Coming Together, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, E.F. Schumacher Society, and the Association Of Joint Labor-Management Educational Programs.

Tilson Films Inc. was established in 2006, with production offices now located in both Palm Beach County, Florida, and New York City. While Tilson Films continues to produce a variety of informational videos, Tilson himself has increasingly concentrated on development and production of documentary projects, both shorts and features. The 2008 "Elders For Obama"- film project was a great success, going viral- online, getting distributed by the Obama campaign and other organizations, and now being featured in the 2009 documentary from Global Vision Inc., called "The People"s President".

Tilson has also co-produced the recent documentary feature, "The Road Home"-, the moving story of a group of disabled Iraq war veterans who are finding their own unique path back to wholeness-. The film is on the festival circuit now, and in 2009 won the Broader Visions award at the Garden State Film Festival.

With Tilson as Producer/Director, Tilson Films Inc. is completing production in 2009 of two important new documentary films. "Truth Indeed" follows a small band of Palm Beach County, Florida "counter-military recruitment" activists, whose years of successful work in the county school system landed them squarely in the sights of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program. "The Indian Line Model" chronicles the birth and rebirth of America's first CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture farm -- and the explosive growth of the CSA movement's efforts to create sustainable local agriculture and economies, reclaiming America's food chain from a handful of giant corporations.

Tilson has also recently joined forces with a dynamic, progressive new political media consulting firm, DMedia Inc., and is working as media consultant and producer for the firm. Learn more at http://demediapolitical.com.

For more info on Tilson Films Inc., please visit http://tilsonfilms.com/.

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