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Glenn Winuk

Jay S. Winuk is president of the public relations firm Winuk Communications, Inc. and the co-founder and executive vice president of the nonprofit MyGoodDeed. This article was adapted for Constitution Daily from one Jay originally wrote for Yahoo News for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack on our nation.

Somehow, 10 years have come and gone since my brave younger brother Glenn was murdered by terrorists on September 11, 2001. The shock goes away, I guess, and some of the pain, perhaps, but not so much, really. Especially now, as this historic milestone approaches. How should we pay tribute to those we lost and those who responded?

The White House recently issued guidelines on how to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 with instructions to honor the memory of those who died on American soil through national service and to thank those in the military, law enforcement, intelligence and homeland security for their contributions since.

Active citizenship is indeed the way I have chosen to honor my brother and all those who were lost and those who rose in service in response to the attacks.

Glenn was a partner at the law firm Holland & Knight, at the time located just a block from what we now call Ground Zero. A 20-year volunteer firefighter and EMT in our hometown of Jericho, NY, Glenn sprung into action when the Towers were hit. He helped evacuate his colleagues, and then raced toward the South Tower, running into the towering inferno to save lives.

Glenn was an active citizen – someone who fulfilled both his rights and responsibilities. Glenn did what firefighters do, and what he had done for two decades. Just 40 years old when he died, his partial remains were recovered in March 2002, medic bag by his side. A true American hero had perished, along with a horrifying number of others.

Glenn was a remarkable person, as giving a man as I have ever known. He always went out of his way for people, and not just as an attorney and firefighter. Taking care of others, doing good deeds, just came naturally to him. It gave him great satisfaction. As brothers, we were very close. We attended the same college, shared many of the same friends and spent many happy times together. Losing Glenn, especially in this way, hurts every day.

How best to honor those lost and, for that matter, those who rose in service to get our nation back on its feet in the aftermath of the attacks? What could we do to ensure they would not be forgotten by future generations?

My friend David Paine called me with an idea soon after the carnage. Let’s make 9/11 a national day of service. Let’s turn the tables, and make 9/11 about acts of kindness and charity and volunteerism in tribute to those who were killed. Sounded just right to me, and to each and every 9/11 family member we canvassed about it.

David and I co-founded the nonprofit MyGoodDeed in 2003, encouraging people to visit our web site and register a pledge to honor the victims with acts of kindness toward others, each and every 9/11 anniversary.

#911day lendyourvoice shareyourstory createthechange sodina

Alex Sullivan was killed on July 20th 2012 in the Aurora theater massacre, celebrating his 27th birthday. In this interview, Tom talks about his relationship with Alex, what he does when he watches a movie at the theater. He reflects on what life is like today without Alex and what he would like America to know. Leaving the statistics to others, he shares the personal things he now knows as a father of a murder victim, all with a goal to get people talking, to get people to do something before they have a similar story to tell.

(via https://soundcloud.com/user-810481127/tom-sullivan-alex-sullivan?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=tumblr)

#SoundCloud #SODINA #lendyourvoice #shareyourstory #createthechange

Please Silence Your Phones and Be Aware of Suspicious People

We are being swallowed by a culture of fear as our sense of safety and security erodes every day. How will this fear affect our younger generation and the prospects for our country? What can we do about it?

I settled into my seat last Sunday, days before Regal Cinema’s announcement to check moviegoer’s bags. I checked the locations of the exits in case of an emergency. I know my wife was doing the same. I wondered if my 15 years olds were too or if they were as anxious as I was. Were they looking at the people already seated and the ones coming in, as I was? I’d hoped not, I hoped they were just looking forward to the movie at our local AMC Theater. The announcements started with scenes of the silly animated red characters and accompanying voiceover, “please silence your phones, don’t use your phone to text, and don’t talk as this will distract others.” But then the usual cartoon animation of colliding cows riding in cars stopped, where the voiceover used to say ‘in the event of a cow collision or emergency, please walk to nearest exit…’ The animated scene had been replaced by bold red text and I’m paraphrasing here, to “be aware of suspicious people, if you see someone suspicious, notify the staff.” It continued with “in the case of an emergency walk to the nearest exit and once outside, move as far away as possible.” Being told to walk to the nearest exit and moving far away (also new instructions at least in the last year), has taken on an entirely different meaning since the Aurora, and Lafayette theater shootings and the axe attack in Tennessee.

Maybe we can expect the next version of the movie theater message to sound similar to airplane crash procedures, “In the event of an active shooter, your seatback can be removed and used as a bullet-proof shield.”

Have these growing active shooter incidents seeped into our kids’ conscience and do they fear the world a little more every day? My kids were in lockdown as was my wife during the Sandy Hook massacre. They were 12 then, how has their perception of our country developed? Since then, there have been suicides in town, some close to our family. The 24/7 news cycle and Facebook feeds highlight the killing of unarmed black men, shootings in churches, recruitment centers, military bases, college deaths by suicide due to pressures to achieve, accidental deaths involving children getting their hands on unsecured guns. Will our kids reminisce about the good ole days when they could just walk into a movie, school, the mall or church without having to go through a metal detector? Those were the days.

According to the CDC’s Fatal Injury Report, in 2013, more than 41,000 people died by suicide plus another 16,000 homicides. What kind of a country will it be 15, 30 years from now? Will people be afraid to go anywhere (as some do in our urban environments today)? What will be the state of our collective brain health be and what will the suicide rate be?

If there is any silver lining in all of this, there are plenty of ways for people to get involved. There are many factors that lead to violent deaths which includes dying by suicide. If you are not one of the more than 234 million voting age adults that will question and pressure our elected leaders for reasonable safety laws like background checks for everyone while respecting people’s 2nd amendment rights, there are other options. You can look into brain health and take a mental health first aid course to be able to spot the signs when someone might be in crisis. Some organizations offer these at no cost. Before you let your kids play somewhere, ask the other parents if there’s a gun in their house and is it secured? If you have adolescents or anyone in the house with a brain illness, be a responsible gun owner and secure your guns. You can support work to interrupt violence, institute restorative justice or look for ways to help break the cycle of poverty wherever it exists. You can investigate anti-bullying programs and see if you can institute one in your community. You can join a community organization that fosters connectedness.

There are plenty of options to get involved. Don’t wait until violence impacts you, your family, friends or community to do something. Many advocates who are trying to save lives are survivors to victims of violence. Ask them why they do what they do and you’ll likely here one or more of these three answers: “It’s my way of dealing with the loss”, “I don’t want my loved one’s death to be in vain” or “I don’t want anyone else to have to experience this”.

You don’t want to wish you’d done something like many of us do after the fact. Be proactive, do something to make this a safer, and better country for you, your kids, and your neighbors. As John F. Kennedy said “One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.”

It’s not too late to make changes that will allow us and our children to feel safe when going to the movies, mall, school, church or around the corner.

At the end of the day, we’re all just human beings trying to live the safest and best lives we can.

On June 17, 2009 my precious daughter, Emma Jane, passed away, five days before her 17th birthday. Emma was beautiful, bright, and articulate, with an effervescent personality. She was a talented musician who shared her musical gifts generously and participated in every musical ensemble she could fit into her schedule. She was a caring daughter, sister, and friend and a bright light in the lives of many, many people. Emma took her own life. When Emma killed herself she created a tsunami of destruction that swept up family, friends, teachers, ministers, mentors and neighbors. All of us struggled against the current of guilt, pain, shock and bewilderment. For her immediate family: her father, sister and me, life as we knew it ended. I’m not sure we will ever fully understand why Emma ended her life; what caused what must have been an incredibly deep sense of despair and hopelessness; or why she couldn’t reach out to us or to the many other caring adults and professionals she had in her life. Nonetheless, in the days, weeks and months after Emma’s death I turned to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) to learn more about suicide and to search for clues that would help explain why my beautiful, bright, talented daughter was gone from our lives.

The facts that I discovered about suicide shocked and alarmed me. Suicide claims close to 39,000 lives in the United States, which is nearly as many as breast cancer and more than twice as many as HIV/AIDS. According to the CDC, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death across all ages and the second leading cause of death for children ages 12-17. It is the only one of the ten leading causes of death that has not seen a decline or leveling off in the number of deaths each year. And the fact that is often missing from the debate on gun control is that 60% of deaths by firearms are suicides.

With statistics like those, how is it that no one; not our schools, not our pediatrician, not even Emma’s therapist of three years, had talked to us about suicide and alerted us to the warning signs? If my husband and I knew the warning signs, would we have been able to get her the right help? My daughter’s pediatrician saw Emma just 3 weeks before her death for a hormonal disorder that causes depression. Had she understood the risk of suicide in teens like Emma, would she have treated that disorder more aggressively or, perhaps, referred her to a psychiatrist for an assessment? If her therapist, who she saw the night before she ended her life, had had specific training in assessment of suicide risk, would she have picked up a sign that would have allowed us to intervene before it was too late?

I became involved with AFSP as a field advocate because I believe we can do a better job of preventing suicide. We can raise awareness about suicide prevention and mental illness and reduce the stigma that prevents people from seeking treatment. We can get all the information we already know about suicide prevention into the hands of the people who are best positioned to identify and intervene with those at risk: school personnel, primary care physicians, and behavioral health providers. We can fund research that will unlock remaining mysteries about suicide and mental illnesses and lead to safer and more effective treatments. If we join together to do these things, I know we can save lives.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Emma and remember the gift that she was in our lives. Working on behalf of AFSP is my way of honoring her and thanking her for the many beautiful memories that I treasure.

- Nancy von Euler

#SODINA #lendyourvoice #shareyourstory #createthechange

Lend Your Voice, Share Your Story, and Create the Change at www.SODINA.org

I was staring out the window where, 24 hours earlier, I had watched the SWAT truck, with its team hanging off, clad in body armor and rifles at the ready, drive down my street. In the background, I could see helicopters fly over the Sandy Hook Elementary School searching for more shooters. I can only describe the feeling as a sense or recognition that I was human, sharing a common bond with others. I distinctly remember, strange as it may sound, shedding any sense of idolization of others, we’re all human.

You and me? We’re the same.

At the most basic of levels, we are the same. We share 99.9% of our DNA. Yet, despite a relatively short amount of time on this planet and no guarantee of a tomorrow, we seem to be geared more towards competition rather than cooperation and collaboration, and we tend to focus on only the 0.1% that makes us different.

We’re brought into this world with an absolutely clean slate, blissfully unaware, innocent, a complete lack of knowledge--let alone any control over who raises us or how. At some point we begin to learn about our perceived differences, whether it’s our gender, ethnicity, socio-economic "status," values, etc. These labels become engrained in us. Sometimes they define us. But while we may accept the labels or the perceived differences on some level, we can paradoxically, and maybe conveniently, disregard them on another level when we assume that everyone should think or act the way we do.

It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about us.

We’re here for a very brief period. Although we are ultimately responsible only for ourselves, we do not walk alone on this earth. We rely on each other for companionship and survival.

I live in Newtown, CT and have many questions stemming from the mass murder that occurred here. I never imagined it could happen here, in my neighborhood. Violence is not as remote as it once was. I continue to be horrified, angry, and feel profound sadness for the victims, their families and each degree of separation outward from this massive epicenter. How did we as a country, a community, a neighborhood, a family, a person, allow this to happen? Obviously, no one with implicit knowledge of what would occur would have allowed such an unspeakable act. You wonder about all the potential steps along the way of a person’s life where someone could have changed one thing that may have made a difference and kept the killer from picking up a gun that day or any day. Could the course of events have been altered to the extent that this tragedy possibly would never have happened?

It felt like we as a society have failed so many people along the way, and in small ways we fail a little every day. We also succeed in small ways every day. Can we increase our successes and decrease our failures at a more rapid pace in our struggle to creating cultural change and a more peaceful world?

I see this cultural change as moving from a “me” to “we” attitude and it echoes the golden rule of treating others as we would like to be treated. Of course we need to do what’s best for us and our families. We’re all facing the same basic needs to survive, minimize pain and finding meaning in our lives. If these are the fundamental forces in our journey, can’t we seek happiness and meaning not just for ourselves and our families, but also for our neighbors, our community, and our country? Increasing happiness and/or minimizing pain around us, directly and indirectly, would bring us more happiness, no? While I may be the center of my universe, I can still empathize and have compassion for others.

#sodina #lendyourvoice #shareyourstory #createthechange

The word for constellation in Navajo is: "So' Dine'é.” It means "Star People.”

SODINA

We are all human.

We are all here for a very short time in relation to the universe and thus rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But although we may look at our existence as insignificant at times, we hold enormous power over how we lead our lives and our potential for doing both good and bad.

We are all on the same journey, trying to make sense of our world, our place in it, to find meaning in our lives, trying to find happiness.

We are limited only by what we believe are our limitations. While we may have limited power and influence as individuals, if we cooperate and collaborate with like-minded people, we can accomplish much more than we may imagine.

We should ask ourselves why are things the way they are?

Why can’t things be changed?

There’s great probability that others feel as we do and we simply need to find each other, listen to each other and collaborate toward a common goal.

SODINA.org is about finding each other, sharing our personal stories, and giving them a place to shine for all to see.

#sodina #lendyourvoice #shareyourstory #createthechange

Here is SODINA's initial story. It is our hope through the sharing of stories of people whose lives were taken by violence at the hand of another or by themselves, we can honor them by sharing a face and a story rather than numbers and statistics. Our hope is to move you to get involved which can be through an organization, how you vote or how you carry yourself and treat others. You can learn more at http://www.sodina.org/

“Our daughter was one of 20 students and 6 educators murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT on December 14th, 2012.

This child was everything to my husband and me. She was the essence of spirit, hope, and love. She loved her family, her friends, and animals. She sang and hummed so much so that her narrative of life was often in song, whether she was singing to us, or humming and singing to herself while engaged in play. She loved to cook with her mom, run with her dad, develop imaginary worlds with her friends, she rode horses, ice skated, she dreamed of one day becoming an artist, she played with her cats and her dog, and snuggled into bed with her parents at night for a regular span of reading books. How does one encompass in written word a child, a loved one? It is difficult to list her many lovely qualities. She was empathetic, kind, and felt no one should be left alone, or out of the circle, and would invite strangers to play. She was whip smart, and so poignantly funny that her parents would often laugh out loud many times a day.

Ask yourselves, what did the world lose when this child was murdered? She could have been a doctor, a teacher, a best friend to someone in need. She could have changed the world. She changed ours, and those who knew and loved her know that emptiness now, acutely and strongly felt were her daily gifts. And now we are left feeling her unrealized potential, shattered and aching to hold her, to smell her, to hear her tinkling laughter, to converse with her. Ask yourselves, what does the world lose when a child is murdered? A community leader? A teacher? A doctor? A scientist? A good parent?...”

- Jennifer Hensel

#sodina #lendyourvoice #shareyourstory #createthechange

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