This is the time to mobilize your righteous indignation. Put all that practice from your formative years to good use:
Marching around the square chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, racism has got to go.” Attending workshops on “safe sex” (Remember the “safe sex” of the ’80s that pre-dated the more ominous “safer sex”?). All the verbal support you pledged your queer friends before they could legally marry. The outrage you felt as the years rolled by and the bullet-riddled bodies continued to pile up. The growing conversations on poverty, addiction, privilege, violence, race, pain.
I’m asking you to take the ball of fire that you’ve been building, that internal combustion in response to Orlando and Stanford and Columbine and Steubenville and Sandy Hook and Penn State and Fort Hood and Vanderbilt and Binghamton and Oakland and Aurora and Tucson and Seal Beach and the University of Alabama and Santa Monica and HOW LONG ARE WE GOING TO ALLOW THIS LIST TO GET?
Take that ball of fire and do two things:
1) Speak In: Talk with your closest people – your partners, your children. Talk about sex. Talk about consent. Talk about intimate violence. Teach and model conflict resolution. Demonstrate how to manage anger. Practice peace.
2) Speak Out: Contact your elected officials. The time for helplessness is over. No more sitting idly by, offering condolences. March. Sit in. Dance in. Chant. Sing in. Challenge misogynists and racists and homophobes.
Do something.