May 25 2018. Another school shooting happened today. One will probably happen again next week, and the week after that. I am not a politician. I am not a law maker or judge. I am no longer a student. I am not a teacher or a parent. I am an artist, and I believe my job as an artist is to create music to open the listeners mind in the few minutes that they’re hearing my song. I don’t promise to always say the right things or be politically correct. I don’t know enough about guns or what laws might prevent the next murder of an innocent child. There are millions of these people already protesting our current laws, so I decided to speak on something that I am more familiar with that will hopefully open up a dialogue to go hand in hand with gun violence talks. The topic I am familiar with is mental illness. Right now it is a devastating crisis affecting our youth. I’ve struggled with mental illness since I was young. I just thought I was the crazy kid. I kept to myself so others wouldn’t know about my ‘issues’. I luckily to battle my illness by writing songs, it was my escape from it all. Unfortunately, in the last decade, since i was in middle school, I guess, I’ve seen our situation become incredibly worse. I can't go a few days without seeing a tweet or a Facebook post saying, “ My friend killed themselves today”. As a society, we have ignored countless signs of mental illness and blanketed these issues with prescription pills and stigmas that only polarized these kids who need help the most. Then we sit on our couches and see headlines reading ‘ Record High Teen Suicide’ and ‘ Kids Bring Weapon to Class’, then act shocked and make it seem like they’re just born quote-unquote, “Crazy”. These kids need way more than a handful of fucking Xanax. I’m not here to excuse or condone any violence, but just to shed a light on societies passive roll in creating a mind inside a kid to do such horrific things to their peers. Now this is not a letter about a racist, radicalized, adult walking into a school and killing children, or shooting up a church or a Denny’s. There is no fucking excuse for that. There is no helping someone who wants to hurt innocent people, and they should never be forgiven. I’m writing this because, today on the news, I saw that a 12 year old boy walked into a class and shot at his fellow students. No one was killed, but I turned off the T.V. and really asked myself, “ At 12, what was I doing? Was I at wrestling practice? Was I playing on my Game Boy? Maybe working up enough courage to talk to a girl in my gym class”. One thing that never crossed my mind was hurting myself or others. That doesn’t mean that other kids don’t go through these things, and have these feelings. I think we need to take a step back and wonder what id driving a boy who should be at band practice, to want to die and take innocent classmates with him. I was advise not to speak on my song, Johnny, in this letter. I told my management team I was going to write it anyway, and I want to say a few things. Johnny is a 12 year old boy someone that you may know but have no idea what is going on through his head. Johnny could be a girl who comes home with cuts on her arms but her parents tell her, “ Its a phase.” and shes “Going to grow out of it”. Johnny could be your son that starts posting weapons on social media but you just say, “ Boys will be boys”. Johnny could be your friend, who gets called a slut and tells you she wants to die every day but you ignore the signs. I will say it again, there is no apologizing for a school shooter, but no boy hardly yet through puberty would ever do what Johnny did, without being mentally ill and drastically effected in a negative way by our society. I was told that writing a song that speaks more from the shooters perspective could be taken the wrong way. And that is why I wouldn’t change a fucking word to this song. As a society in America, we have to understand that our job is to put our youth first, not to measure mental health on a ‘crazy’ scale. Everything shouldn’t be easy listening and viewing. Sometimes we need to know what could happen if we don’t do something. I am no saint and I am just as guilty when it comes to turning a blind eye to this epidemic. We need to learn to talk with our kids, realize that regardless of what politicians put into law, we can make a difference without them. A difference that could change the impact of one or one thousand lives, maybe more. Something as simple as, “Hows your mental health today?” or “I saw your tweet are you doing okay? lets talk about it”. This song was meant to cause a stir. It was meant to upset people. It was meant to really put the pressure on us as a society to combat mental health, starting from preschool onward. I didn’t have someone at my school to talk to about my feelings, and I was afraid to talk to my friends about it. I want that to end. I want there to be unlimited resources available in every public school for kids to let it all out and to know its okay to be sad, but it isn’t okay to give up. Most importantly, I wrote this song without a happy ending because there is no happy ending without us making a change. Before any law is put in place or before any therapist is put into our schools, a shooting will happen again. I end this letter by saying this. I am not a politician. I am not a lawmaker, or a judge, or a person of authority. I am no longer a student. I am not a teacher or a parent. I am a human being, and I wrote this letter to hopefully bring us together to civilly and quickly put our kids first and make mental illness a priority. I will make no apologies for this song. if it pisses off a million people, but helps one kid know that their mental health is fucking important and their society is here to help them through it all, then it is worth every bit of hate. I’m going to do my best from here on out to listen. Your friend, Riz
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