I recently had the opportunity to speak to the prolific, effective and straight-talking American anti-gun violence campaigner Fred Guttenberg for my Bloomberg interviews show. Fred does not mince his words. He also wears his heart on his sleeve. Perhaps you would, too, if your daughter had been murdered at school during a mass shooting – as his wonderful Jaime was aged 14, alongside 16 others, in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018.
Fred shared some surprising things, such as his change of heart about the recent decision for his daughter’s killer not to be handed the death sentence, and how he feels no fear when receiving death threats from those supportive of the powerful US gun lobby.
But I was probably most taken aback by his admission of guilt. He told me he still feels guilty for not raising his voice against mass shootings and gun violence until after his own child was gunned down at school. I nearly moved to assuage such feelings, but instead, I resisted and chose to stay quiet as Fred made an important point about desensitisation.
How do you stop people from becoming used to terrible and deathly things? How do you reach people anew when there are, in this case, so many mass shootings in America, and help them to feel what they ought to: outrage and revulsion, rather than sadness and resignation.
It is a problem he has grappled with, alongside how to stop the shootings in the first place, on his road to becoming a full-time campaigner. Fred’s solution? To try his very hardest to explain to people how it feels to lose your child to gun violence.
He explains his emotions painstakingly: how he regrets every single day that he rushed his daughter out of the house that morning, with her older brother, without saying, “I love you.” How he relives the sound of the gunshots he heard on the phone to his son as he struggled to locate his sister after the shooter began his murderous spree – a sound which would have been the last that Fred’s baby girl heard.
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He does this also because the sentence that is said to him most often is: “I can’t imagine how you feel.” And he wants to help anyone who engages with him, from his now great friend President Joe Biden to a stranger he meets after a rally, to cross that divide and meet him in the new land he calls home. A land where he is still a father to his daughter, but the cemetery is where they now meet. He does this to help Americans shake off their inertia or weary acceptance that mass shootings are here to stay.
It is a far cry from the world we also live in where people are regularly told they cannot hope to understand someone else’s experience unless they, too, have experienced it. While that is undeniably true on one level, it is an approach which means we run the risk of leaving people alone in their experience silos, thinking it is not our place to get involved in some way.
Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s First Lady, visited the UK this week to, among several high-profile engagements, address a totally captivated Parliament. She did so to, as effectively as possible, communicate the horror of Russian soldiers raping women and girls as part of, as she put it, a systematic use of sexual violence in the war raging in her country. MPs were for once hushed into silence as they digested the horror of her words, delivered without fanfare but with huge meaning.
Sexual violence as a tool of warfare, like mass shootings in America, is sadly nothing new. Nor is it only a practice said to be happening in Ukraine. Such acts are occurring in at least 18 other conflict zones right now, according to Foreign Office officials. But in a world where we are flooded with content across news channels, radio shows, podcasts and social media, how to cut through and make people feel the things they need to feel is a real challenge.
That is why the Queen Consort’s words at a Buckingham Palace reception this week (which Ms Zelenska also attended, alongside 300 survivors, activists and charity workers) to highlight violence against women and girls, rang out.
Camilla said: “Over the years, in my previous role, I had the privilege of meeting many survivors of rape and domestic abuse; and of sharing in the sorrow of people who had lost family members to violence. And again and again, I heard that two of the most powerful ways in which to help were to remember and to listen.”
Many nodded as she said the words “remember” and “listen” and she then went on to sombrely list a few of the women who have been killed this year, some allegedly by those “who should have loved them best”.
Of course that particular event, which I also attended, is now going to be remembered for different reasons – namely the way that black British charity boss Ngozi Fulani, the chief executive of Sistah Space, was asked repeatedly by a member of the Royal Household where she was “really” from.
Lady Susan Hussey, former lady-in-waiting to the late Queen, resigned swiftly afterwards, among apologies and condemnations from the Palace and her godson, Prince William.
But Fulani has herself said she wants the spotlight returned to those who have suffered at the hands of abusers. She knows how hard it is to hold the focus on another perennial that many become desensitised to: the death and abuse of women and girls at the hands of men.
There is also the challenge of how best to respond when we do hear a message that cuts through about something that needs to change. The story has moved us – but now what?
Slacktivism, as some termed it – putting what you feel or want to condemn on social media – is no longer the norm for many. The toxicity of trying to learn anything or have meaningful discussions on such platforms has turned lots of people off. Former very keen users are simply sharing and reading less. They are logging off.
So what to do now? Write to those involved, to those with power, take to the streets, launch petitions and more. Calls to action are being issued – but who will take them up? And how?
It will also be incumbent on those tasked with sharing information, from public servants to journalists, to find the most compelling way to tell stories. Every day, faced with a blank script ahead of a live programme, this is what I think about, along with the Woman’s Hour team. How can we get you to stop, listen and engage? What’s the best question? Who is the best guest? It is always a work in progress – but you know when you get it right.
Awakening people is hard. Ironically even more so in this content-rich age, when the easiest thing is to swipe to the next story and zone out. From Fred Guttenberg to Olena Zelenska, tirelessness seems to be key – as does, sadly, being willing to share the most moving stories of them all.
Emma Barnett is the presenter of ‘Woman’s Hour’