February 21, 2018

Gut-Wrenching Parkland Memorials Are Showing Up All Over the Country

Florida’s latest tragedy is resounding from coast to coast.

A woman lays flowers at a student memorial outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Orit Ben-Ezzer via ZUMA Wire

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After the slaughter in Parkland, Florida, last week, an enormous memorial was set up outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High to mourn the 17 people killed at the school. But as survivors began speaking out—planning a series of demonstrations next month and a national walkout in April—sympathetic mourners around the nation have created makeshift memorials of their own.

In a 1997 paper, Texas professor C. Allen Haney called spontaneous memorials an “emerging American mourning ritual,” a way to mark a place as sacred. Yet that ritual is evolving as memorials are erected in solidarity. We saw it when people commemorated 9/11, the 2015 Paris attacks, and the attacks on Brussels in 2016. Here, now, are some of the far-flung places where people have stepped up to commemorate the victims of Florida’s latest mass shooting.

San Francisco

https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/966072659669733376

Emerald Isle, North Carolina

Orlando, Florida

North Montgomery, Indiana

https://twitter.com/NMHS_FACS/status/965985256078798848

Bettendorf, Iowa

New York City

One of the student victims, 14-year-old Jaime Guttenberg, was a “passionate dancer” who loved the color orange, as Broward County’s Sun-Sentinel reports. To honor her life, dancers across the country—in professional companies, at competitions, and in class—wore orange ribbons while they performed.

Menifee, California

Adrian, Michigan

Upper Montclair, New Jersey

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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