Charlie Kirk was denied, but his Turning Point followers, and all the rest of us, deserve the chance to live in peace

I’m a South Dakota legislator who happens to be a registered member of the Democratic Party. I’m proud to serve my community and my state, and whatever topic of the day we’re working through in Pierre, I do my best to always show respect to my colleagues.

I’m far from perfect, as a human being is. But I know that I can sleep at night knowing I’ve done everything in my power to acknowledge the humanity in every person I encounter, even when we fundamentally disagree. I was raised not to hate but to look deeper and see someone’s humanity when I’m frustrated, angry or outright discouraged.

I was in a meeting when I was sent the video of Charlie Kirk’s murder. I didn’t want to see that, nor do I ever want to see it again. Charlie Kirk and I couldn’t be further apart in many of our views, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered. Period. 

I was stunned into silence and shaken because I knew that comments would be written that call for war on each other. It further compounded a fear I felt when the Democratic Leader in the Minnesota House, Melissa Hortman, was assassinated along with her husband this summer, not to mention the assassination attempt on Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife.

As an elected Democrat in a neighboring state at a time when Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota and an unnamed neighboring state were on a list of targets for assassination, I genuinely wondered that day if I was in the right profession. Not to mention, would Sadie and I be the next headline for assassination?

I’ve come to realize since June that I am in the right profession, even if the only vocation of my public service is to write this to you tonight to say one thing: Do not succumb to violence. It will never help you or me.

There is a nearly universal response to the news of Charlie Kirk’s murder that it is wrong. That is the sign of humanity’s goodness.

Unfortunately, without any knowledge of the shooter’s motives or identity, there are people across the country who will share their judgment that the Democrats (yes, including me) are responsible for Charlie Kirk’s murder or that Charlie Kirk, right or wrong, somehow deserved his fate. Worse still, this rhetoric is going on as the news of yet another school shooting arrives, and we continue to see war and genocide in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, respectively.

I’m writing this to plead and beg you, as your friend, family member, colleague, or just someone you may know, to stop any thought of dehumanizing your fellow person.

Republican? A human. Democrat? Also a human. Literally any political party? Also human.

Humanity is in the people we don’t like. Humanity is in the people who do bad things. Humanity is in the people who don’t look or sound like us. Humanity is in the people we don’t associate with.

But humanity is what unifies us all. And it is what unifies us long before the conversation of what country you're from, what political party you belong to, or what beliefs you choose to follow.

This human is asking you not to succumb to words spreading to blame Democrats, to the words shared on the other end of the spectrum (that inflammatory words used by Charlie Kirk were somehow justifiable for these events), or even worse, that there is a justifiable war on each other. This human is asking you to look deeper and see where we can be better to ourselves and others.

As your friend and family member who has now had to consider whether I allow fear to dominate my life as an elected official, I ask you this: Will you join me in choosing to see humanity?

We aren’t divided, if we choose not to be. And I’d prefer we choose not to be divided, because I don’t want to be the next target of a shooting, nor any of my colleagues.

My prayers are with the Kirk family, as they were with the Hortmans and Hoffmans and those families of children wounded in a school shooting in Colorado. We cannot allow violence to be our default. We must see each other as humans who deserve the chance to live in peace.

It's the only way we’ll move forward and have the capacity to change our world for the better through action.

We can and must do better for each other. That’s the truth.

Erik Muckey of Sioux Falls is a Democrat in his first term representing District 15 in the South Dakota Legislature.

Photo: President Trump delivering address to a gathering of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point followers, public domain, wikimedia commons

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