Reese Kaplan -- Live (Fortunately) From El Paso

Unless you were in a self-imposed media vacuum for the past few days you have undoubtedly heard about the mass shootings that took place in Dayton, Ohio and here in El Paso, Texas.  Many of you are aware that I live in El Paso after having grown up in the NYC metropolitan area.

Saturday morning I had met up with a friend from work at a local Starbucks where we rode our motorcycles through a lovely backroads route under a canopy of pecan trees just before reaching first Old Mesilla, New Mexico and then Las Cruces, New Mexico.  When the intended location for breakfast was closed due to road construction making its parking lot inaccessible, we headed back to Old Mesilla and relaxed for awhile over eggs while chatting up the folks who arrive there on the weekend with their big boy toys – motorcycles, antique cars and the like. 

Afterwards my friend mentioned he needed gas, so I suggested we head back towards Las Cruces where I knew a gas station was located.  It was just past the entrance to the freeway, so we opted to return that way rather than on the scenic backroads past farmlands and vineyards. 

About 10:45 AM while hitting the outskirts of El Paso a caravan of police cars and SUVs with sirens blaring went speeding past us in the left lane.  We assumed, incorrectly, that there was a major accident up ahead of us and naturally we silently hoped to be off the road before we encountered the traffic it would cause.

Upon arriving home I learned about the mass shooting that had taken place at the Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall.  At that time the news story was fluid.  They weren’t sure if it was single shooter or multiple shooters, whether the target was just the Walmart or the mall adjacent to it, and no one had any idea how many people were wounded or killed as a result of this depraved individual opening fire.

The remainder of the Saturday was spent glued to the TV watching the coverage while simultaneously reaching out to friends and relatives outside of El Paso to let them know all were safe here, and within El Paso to check up on them.  While many of us have undergone active shooter drills at our workplaces due to the unchecked violence plaguing this country, it’s quite different when it happens for real.  We discovered, for example, that our “telephone trees” were inadequate in this binational community where some folks did not have the capability to dial phones out to Mexico to check on the employees who lived there.  Many people come to the USA to visit El Paso for shopping trips from nearby border city, Ciudad Juarez.  

We’re awaiting word on one of my coworkers’ parents who is still missing.  The bodies are inside the Walmart as it is an active crime scene and I’d really hate to be in her shoes not knowing. (Since writing this piece on Sunday morning, we unfortunately got word that her mother was indeed one of the shooter's murder victims.)

To hear some politicians tell it, the borders are a dangerous menace and crime is the result.  It’s ironic, therefore, that El Paso has come up many consecutive years as the safest city in the continental USA and numerous non-partisan studies have documented that the crimes perpetrated by illegal immigrants are actually at a far lower rate than the Americans living here.  As is often the case when these types of senseless tragedies occur, the folks in charge offer up “thoughts and prayers” instead of taking actions to prevent these circumstances from happening in the first place.  There have been 250 victims of mass shootings in this year alone.

Right now everyone in El Paso is still in a state of shock, afraid to go to the malls, the Walmarts, the stadium or anywhere else large numbers of people accumulate.  One politician said something particularly revealing about the safety and vitality of this community.  More people were killed yesterday than in more than a single year, yet this is supposed to be a lawless and dangerous place according to what others might say.  It turns out that the shooter was a white American who had traveled from a Dallas suburb here, not someone from El Paso and not an illegal immigrant.  

Furthermore, donations to blood banks and of bottled beverages for people waiting on lines and for emergency workers have been cut off due to the unprecedented number of people within the city who have stepped forward to help.  The local funeral parlors have told they will handle all expenses gratis and the injured have been told they need not be afraid to step forward for proper medical treatment due to their immigration status.  Thankfully folks here care more about people than politics.

Last night I kind of flashed on the September 11^th, 2001 day when I was sleepwalking through the surreal haze of vulnerability caused by that incident.  I tried to watch the ballgame that night but I couldn’t muster the usual enthusiasm knowing that issues much larger than baseball had taken place. I apologize to the readers for perhaps bringing you down and I tried very hard not to be overtly political but something has to change if this ongoing domestic terrorism will end instead of continuing to spread.  Certainly fanning the flames of hatred is not helping the situation at all.