An Inside Account of the UW Red Square Shooting

The UW shooting showed me, yet again, how screwed up the systems are. The political system, the legal system, the administrative system, the educational system, the capitalist system. But perhaps what’s more frustrating about the shooting is how it’s emblematic of a much larger problem. Everyday people are taught to, and in fact often do, blame each other — people in the very same boat who are just as much afraid of it going under, just by different names — rather than blaming the systems that perpetuate their burdens and limit their upward mobility.

Those embroiled in conflict blame everyday individuals for the way things are, and this time it culminated in a protester gunned down. The only difference, really, is the form of action each group takes to somehow absolve the blame, the frustrations and the issues. Some decide to take action through activism while others place trust in a broken system. America teaches us to place our remedies in the political and legal status quo. So it’s not to say those who do are gullible. Rather, they’re distinctly American-trained. American™. And the convenience of being American™ is that there’s Others to blame, which allows the system to evade focus and scrutiny, thereby perpetuating its faults.

via An Inside Account of the UW Red Square Shooting — South Seattle Emerald