Three hundred and eighty thousand. 

Three hundred and eighty thousand children under the age of 5 have been estimated to have been brutally massacred the last 2 years. 

I can’t even comprehend that. My brain can physically not imagine the absolute horror those children and hundreds of thousands of others have gone through — continue to experience. 

This past week an outspoken individual was murdered in broad daylight in the U.S. It was broadcasted on the tv. Within minutes, videos of it were blasted all over the internet. One bullet traumatized everyone left behind. The kids, wife, friends, family, supporters, and, hell, even the haters. The local, national, and even some internal communities —  all traumatized or negatively impacted. 

I personally did not see the video. I knew that it was horrific without further having to traumatize myself with it. People around said it was “One of the worst things they’ve seen.” That they had “never seen so much blood gushing out of someone.” No one deserves to have to witness or be on the receiving end of that. No one. 

I found that a lot of people I knew agreed. They agreed it was horrific. Agreed it was traumatic and unacceptable. People were loud about it too. It didn’t go unnoticed that that was the only violence they have publicly spoken against in the last 2 years. There’s been countless mass shootings and 380,000 precious innocent souls ripped apart by bullets, bombs, fire, and rubble. Not a peep from those sharing photos of man’s dead hands in the casket. 

People have now seen openly what a bullet does to a grown man. The brutality of a weapon of mass destruction. Now, imagine what it does to a 5 year old? What their classmates are left to endure? Their parents? Countless others terrified for children’s lives everyday they go to school. That’s all just what a few bullets and an evil individual can do. 

Imagine the gruesomeness of 355 bullets versus a five year old little girl’s body. Her fear as she pleads for someone, anyone to save her. Her trembling voice as she witnesses the death of her loved ones all around her. That’s what hundreds of bullets and an evil society do. 

It’s not to compare cruelties. Neither should happen, yet, why do so many only condemn one? Some people are horrified by all of it, but only remotely discuss or demand differently for one of those atrocities. There’s no sense of community for our species as a whole. “If I don’t know you, if I don’t like you, if I do not care for you — to hell what happens to you!” Why is that? 

We have one guaranteed existence on this earth: the one in this very present moment. Not the next or the 5 minutes after that or even the year or a century. All we have is now. Why wouldn’t we want it to be everything it could be, everything it should be, as all of existence deserves? People draw the line at themselves and the immediate community around them. The world is plentiful, bountiful, and extraordinary. We are the ones who don’t take care of the most vulnerable of our kind. The ones who poison the earth with hate, violence, indifference, and vitriol. It changes when we as a society do. 

Will we ever? That’s what I struggled with the last week.

380,000 children UNDER the age of FIVE!!!

I’ve seen the intestines as half a child’s body hangs from a building. I have heard the screams of a man whose newborn babies lives were extinguished by bombs. I’ve witnessed a little boy explain he is carrying the pieces of his charred brother’s body. I didn’t need to see the video of a grown man’s on-stage execution to know it was horrendous. I can empathize will all those traumatized by such hateful unnecessary violence. If the most innocent of us are not even protected, then none of us are. Yet thousands of grown adults only feel compelled to discuss or even prevent only one of any of those disturbing realities. It’s selfish. It’s cruel. It’s to our own downfall and demise. 

Three hundred and eighty thousand babies out of over half a million… and that’s on the low end. Brutally, relentlessly, viciously slaughtered.

That which we allow for others, we allow for ourselves too.

I condemn this. I condemn this way of living. This sick society we’re cornered to subscribe to. I don’t just condemn it for the hatefully outspoken grown white man. I condemn it for Hind Rajab, Sidra Hassouna, and hundreds of others. I condemn it for any child that doesn’t get the support and life they deserve to have from those older of own kind globally around the world — for everyone who exists. We all deserve so much better. We can all do better. We have the resources. It would benefit all of us.

380,000 kids under the age of 5 out of 680,000 — from a population, of which 50% were children under 18, that was 2,100,000 two years ago.

And there shouldn’t be a single one more.