Saturday April 6, 2013
Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium
Check in 7 a.m.
Walk starts 9 a.m.

Every journey begins with that first step! As NAMIWalks celebrates our 10th Anniversary in 2012, we are proud to be the largest and most successful mental illness awareness event in America! Through NAMIWalks’ public, active display of support for people affected by mental illness, we are changing our American communities and ensuring that help and hope are available for those in need.

I proudly walked last year after hearing then-CD 8 Congressional candidate Ron Barber (who was shot twice on January 8, 2011 by a mentally ill man) speak compassionately about supporting mental health issues and programs. He said he held no hatred against the mass shooter. Odaiko Sonora taiko drumming group then helped start off the walk around the Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium area, across Ajo Road to the Sam Lena Park and the nearby detention basin ponds, and back to the stadium. About 4,000 people joined in this walk, many with team tshirts.

Go to http://www.namisa.org/, or call 520-622-5582 to register. There are two walks, a 3K and a 5K walk.

Nami programs: family education & support, peer education & support, anti-stigma & advocacy, and support groups

Being as today is April Fool’s Day, I need to emphasize that mental illness is not a joke. We in Tucson know how important mental health services are, especially after that fatal mass shooting on January 8, 2011 by Jared Lee Loughner. He needed intervention and counseling (and hospitalization), and the recent reports released by the Pima County Sheriff reveal the extent of his mental condition prior to the shooting, and what his parents Randy and Amy Loughner knew of his mental illness.

Please support this NAMI walk to raise awareness about mental illness and that help is there for those who need it.

Clearly, Jared Loughner was mentally ill, and pled guilty to these crimes. He is being treated in a mental hospital where he will serve the remainder of his days, as his life sentences have no possibility of parole.

What have we as a community learned from this horrendous mass shooting, right here in our midst? Almost all of us knew someone in that shooting. I was personally acquainted with Gabby, having worked on her campaigns. I knew her Outreach Director Gabe Zimmerman, who was struck down on that sidewalk. I knew aide Pam Simon, who was also shot but recovered. I know now Ron Barber who was shot twice that day, and who as her District Director stepped up to the plate and ran for Congress in CD 8 and CD 2 upon Gabby’s endorsement and request. My professor husband knew Gabby as well, and had taught Suzi Hileman who was shot and injured that day. She was the neighbor who had taken nine-year old Christina Taylor-Green to that Congress on your Corner event, and Christina died that day.

Clearly Loughner was ill, but why didn’t people notice enough? Pima Community College had expelled him due to mental problems but he didn’t get counseling help which he clearly needed. He was living with his parents, Randy and Amy Loughner, but they couldn’t or didn’t get help for him as he was over 18 years old. And where did he (an unemployed 22 year old) get the hundreds of dollars to pay for the Glock 9 gun and the two magazine clips he was captured with? I had worked as a board member for 3 years with Amy who manages Agua Caliente Park out east in Pima County. And I have also worked for a year with Gabe’s mother Emily Nottingham on the Casitas on Broadway board. Two mothers, two shattered lives.

Yes, we as a community have grieved over the past 2 years — a huge outpouring of sympathy and support at all the memorials — at Gabby’s former Swan/Pima office, at that Safeway on Oracle (where a permanent stone memorial was erected by the store), and at University Medical Center where most of the injured were taken to. Generous donations were made for the victims to help them recover, and to various foundations to help children & students in the names of the deceased.

Cactus garden by Wright Elem. School students at memorial outside of Congresswoman Giffords’ former district office at Pima/Swan, taken by Carolyn Classen

Now there are Beyond Tucson annual events to commemorate, heal, and move beyond the pain & horror of that day. Now people ring bells at 10:10 a.m.on January 8th when the shooting occurred, and now the politicians talk about gun control especially for firearms with a capacity to be used for mass killing. Also now there are multi-faith services in Tucson bringing together people of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Baha’i faiths.

Since then there have been attempts at more civility in public discourse, and two foundations created expressly for that purpose. We all remember January 8, 2011 and hopefully we will remember to watch out for danger signals in isolated, depressed young men, to lobby for better mental health services, and more effective gun control to prevent criminals and mentally sick from obtaining firearms.

Hopefully we have become better people after this mass shooting of January 8, 2011. And if you have any creative ideas about what type of permanent memorial should be erected, click here for my previous post about the January 8th Memorial Foundation.