The Buffalo White Supremacist Shooting was a Tragedy. It's Also a Wake-Up Call.

     The shooting in Buffalo made me indescribably sad. Today, it's made me mad. Nothing ever can and ever will bring back those ten poor souls who died or those who were wounded, those in the city of Buffalo and New York state who are mourning, and those millions around the world who feel a lot less safe today. However, we are not powerless to act: we need to turn our anguish into action. The mass murderer wanted to serve as an inspiration for future violence. Instead, we can achieve the opposite and make sure future acts of race-based violence are prevented:

1. Hold the bastard accountable. Payton Grendon murdered 10 people and wounded three others in one of the worst hate crimes in American history. He needs to be federally charged for his actions, and, while the death penalty is off the table at the state or the federal level, he needs to spend the rest of his worthless life in solitary confinement at a maximum security federal prison. 
2. Fill New York's federal bench. There are currently four open seats on New York's district courts and one on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals with no nominees. We should fill these with diverse and qualified Biden judges, including Melissa Murray, Kenji Yoshino, and J. Paul Oetken, to bolster the state's federal court system and the diversity of America's court system as a whole.
3. Confirm Gigi Sohn to head the FCC. When the baby formula shortage took place, Kamala Harris was brought in to break ties and confirm Mary T. Boyle to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission, giving it a Democratic majority. Now that TV news has inspired a mass murderer, it's time to bring in Vice President Harris to break the tie and confirm Gigi Sohn to give the body a Democratic majority.
4. Restore net neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine. President Biden has already signed an executive order restoring net neutrality, one that will be implemented when Sohn is confirmed. The hatred spewing out of the mouths of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham as well as others on FOX News is evidence that we need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, which mandated impartial reporting before being ended by the Reagan administration in 1987. This policy was the reason reporting was so much less biased and politics so much less polarizing in that era. I understand concerns about the free press, but, if we allow Nazi propaganda to be broadcast on our news stations, where are we as a nation?
5. Pass the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. This landmark bipartisan bill would provide tax credits to help local news stations compete against the bug guys, providing Americans from New England to NorCal and everywhere in between access to the unbiased stories that matter most.
6. Sue Wendy Rogers and FOX News. White supremacist Arizona politician Wendy Rogers called the shooting a false flag operation; when Alex Jones of Infowars said the same about the Sandy hook shooting, he was successfully sued in what will likely be a lawsuit worth several million dollars. Rogers clearly did the same thing and should suffer the same consequences. So, too, should Tucker Carlson. If Charles Manson can be held criminally liable for the degree of influence he held over his followers, a New York court should be able to find Tucker Carlson civilly liable when every major news outlet warned that his racist rhetoric would lead to exactly this and his response was to hold a printed picture of one such warning with an amused smile on his face. It demonstrates awareness and the words of the shooter himself demonstrate a clear culpability on the part of Tucker Carlson.
7. Stop Elon Musk from buying Twitter. Elon Musk has put his Twitter buy "on hold" for now, in part thanks to a turn in the stock market and an SEC investigation. His vision for a Twitter with no moderation will turn it into a mainstream 4chan where the next Christchurch, the next Buffalo shooting will be bred and born. For God's sake, the world's richest man, a man with a long history of racism, cannot own Twitter.
8. Stop state and local actions on race, books, and social media. State and local activists are banning "critical race theory," which was mentioned by name by the shooter as the rationale for his acts. At the same time, they are working to ban books that teach about racial and gender fairness and trying to pass unconstitutional legislation banning private tech companies from "censoring" their racist views in hopes of allowing them to spread. We must double our efforts to stop these cruel laws.
9. Disarm hate. The Disarm Hate campaign seeking to ban individuals convicted of hate crimes from owning firearms has been successful in 21 states. In the hours after the shooting, I released a plan on how 23 more states can pass similar legislation. We should also call on Congress to pass the Disarm Hate Act at the federal level.
10. Justice for the families of victims. Congress should pass the Victims of Racially-Motivated Civil Rights-Era Murders and Violence Act to support the families of crimes like these.
11. Declare Loving Day a national holiday. This ultra MAGA Supreme Court is preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade, which puts the decisions that legalized gay marriage, established the right to privacy, mandated that states educate their students, and legalized interracial marriage at risk. The latter decision, Loving v. Virginia, came into the sights of the Indiana Senator Mike Braun, who said it should be left up to states. Making Loving Day, which celebrates the landmark 1967 case, a national holiday, would make it socially impossible to reverse the decision and establish a framework for protecting gay marriage while activists work to defend Roe. Additionally, just as Juneteenth was made a national holiday last year, making Loving Day a holiday this year would promote the ideal of love and equality over hate.
12. Ensure consistent hate crime laws around the country. After the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, Georgia passed a state-level hate crimes law. However, Wyoming, South Carolina, and Arkansas are the last three states in the nation without hate crimes. We need them all to pass real hate crimes laws based on race, gender, etc., and we need to be willing to use the popular initiative method if need be. Until then, the FBI hate crime reporting campaign launched in South Carolina must be expanded to Wyoming and Arkansas.
13. Pass the CROWN Act and George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. This Congress has already passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and Emmett Till Antilynching Act to crack down on hate crimes and the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act to celebrate black history; as I previously mentioned, passing the Loving Day Act would also help do this. Now, I'm calling on Congress to pass a pair of bills designed to stop discrimination from occurring in the first place: the CROWN Act would ban discrimination based on natural hairstyles, and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would answer the call the Black Lives Matter movement delivered in the summer of 2020.

     With 13 victims shot, 10 fatally, there are 13 actions we can take to secure justice and help make the United States, and the world, a better place for all to live. I live by a motto that Nancy Pelosi uses to guide her election campaigning: turn anguish into action. We can be sad about it and let the white supremacist mass murderer win, or we can seek to destroy every perverted ideal he stands for. For the sake of America, we need to go with the latter option.