“Until people start to go into the streets and protest, we’re not going to see the changes … If you don’t have the people rising up, like what they did with civil rights, like what they did to end the Vietnam War … If you don’t have that, [politicians] are going to keep passing the buck.” — former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich

Within the last several weeks, citizens in Israel and the republic of Georgia took to the streets and successfully stopped wildly unpopular actions by their governments. This spring, are we about to see that happen in the U.S.?

In the 24 years since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999, there have been 377 school shootings, and more than 349,000 students have experienced gun violence at school. Yet little has changed.

Yes, a month after last May’s school shootings in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed modest gun reform legislation, the first law in nearly three decades. In the wake of the Nashville, Tennessee murders of six, including three 9-year-olds — and the slaying of five in Louisville, Kentucky, isn’t it time to go further?

In the last few weeks, we got a hint that the answer is yes: Thousands flooded the Tennessee Capitol building — including a disproportionately large number of students — to demand gun control. Three legislators joined the protest outside. However, when Reps. Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson took their protest onto the House floor, urging their colleagues join them in taking action to reduce gun violence, rather than debate gun control, a vote was called to expel them.

The two Justins, African Americans, 27 and 28 years old, were voted out, while the 60-year-old white legislator retained her seat, telling reporters it was because she is white.

After a mass outpouring of support — including signs reading, “No Justins, No Peace”— the following week both returned to the legislature, following unanimous votes by the Nashville city council and the county commissioners in Memphis to appoint them to the seats they’d been elected to. A special (re)election will be held later this year.)

The protests that erupted in the wake of their expulsions only deepened the resolve of not just Tennesseans, but people in Kentucky and around the country. Spurred on by young people, I have a dream that mass demonstrations in state capitals and Washington, D.C. are being planned — right now — for, say the day before Mother’s or Father’s Day. Or, maybe, there will be rolling actions in the streets over the five weeks between those holidays (May 13 to June 17).

I have a dream that the organizations working for gun reform are meeting, perhaps over Zoom, to coordinate this burgeoning nationwide citizen uprising. Here’s an admittedly incomplete list of major groups working on gun control: Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence; Change the Ref; Coalition to Stop Gun Violence; Everytown For Gun Safety; Giffords Courage to Fight Gun Violence; Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America; Sandy Hook Promise; and the aforementioned Students Demand Action. There are plenty of opportunities for us to get involved with any of them.

Of course, the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America and their Republican enablers are doubling down. After the Nashville shooting, Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, who represents Knoxville, a couple hours from Nashville, told reporters that “laws don’t work” to curb gun violence. “It’s a horrible, horrible situation,” Burchett said. “And we’re not gonna fix it,” adding there isn’t “any real role” for Congress to play in reducing gun violence other than to “mess things up. I don’t think you’re gonna stop the gun violence. … I think you gotta change people’s hearts.”

Huh?! Too many hearts have stopped beating, Rep. Burchett. Too many hearts are bruised and broken. Still, because ours are still beating, we are rising up. Burchett may believe there’s nothing to do; his constituents feel differently.

In just the first 4½ months of the year, the Gun Violence Archive has counted 146 mass shootings in the United States, totaling more than 11,500 killed. American madness.

So then why do I feel hopeful? When a conservative like Mr. Kasich, a former Republican member of Congress and governor, urges citizens to take to the streets to force politicians to pass gun laws with teeth, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind’s blowing.

The old John Kasich was a Second Amendment stalwart, toeing the party line, even once boasting that he was in good standing with the NRA. That was then. Now, as Kasich said a few weeks ago on national television, he’s been reading up on the civil rights era Montgomery bus boycott, seeing the connection between that campaign and today.

“Those women down there in Montgomery. They just kept marching. They kept doing everything they could. And that’s what it’s going to take here,” Kasich said.

With tens of thousands of people in the ex-Soviet state of Georgia, and hundreds of thousands across Israel rising up, anything is possible here. Outpourings at the Tennessee statehouse are just the beginning.

Kasich is encouraging people to “begin to get into the street and say enough of this… We all have to mobilize. Without it, the politicians will look the other way. It’s not going to happen in a week or two. It has to be ongoing in order to get this changed.”

From a Republican politician’s mouth to God’s ears. It’s time.

Rob Okun (rob@voicemalemagazine.org), syndicated by Peace Voice, is editor-publisher of Voice Male, a magazine chronicling the antisexist men’s movement for more than a quarter-century. He writes about politics and culture.

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