We know you’re busy. We’ve got a quick favour to ask. No money is involved.
Tomorrow, Saturday March 23rd, the March For Our Lives will bring hundreds of thousands of students to Washington, D.C. A day of protest will unfold across the US.
Even if you’re not American, you’ve undoubtedly been horrified by the killings in Parkland, in Newtown, in Sandy Hook, in… You know what? Here’s a depressing, constantly updated list instead:
List of school shooting in the US
With our talented creative partners at WeTransfer, we’ve created a reading experience entitled Anything But Guns. You can read it on your computer, on your mobile, wherever.
The accompanying illustrations are dashes and swirls of colour made by Jason Logan of the Toronto Ink Company. The inks are made from charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur, the constituent ingredients of gunpowder.
In the piece you’ll meet an indomitable woman, a real person, named Carolyn, who lived through a mass shooting in Utah. You’ll learn about her sense of humour, her life, her family. Her story winds back, as it must, towards a day years ago in a mall in Salt Lake City. She enters the mall with her beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, Kirsten.
During the story, you, the reader, will be given many chances to exit, many chances to politely say no. Carolyn will ask you if you’re ok to continue. She’d like you to continue.
In the US, it seems it’s easier to discuss arming teachers and monitoring video games. It still seems easier to look away.
It’s certainly easier to exit the narrative of people like Carolyn.
We hope you can follow her to the end.