All This Trauma Is Adding Up. How A New Generation Is Finding Ways To Persevere And Find Hope

There have been more than three dozen mass shootings across the United States in January 2023.

In California alone, six killed in Goshen; seven killed in Half Moon Bay, and on Saturday night, 11 killed in Monterey Park.

On Wednesday, students at East Los Angeles College gathered for an evening vigil. Their campus is only three miles from the Monterey Park ballroom where a gunman killed 11 people, celebrating the Lunar New Year. All of the victims were Asian American.

“It makes you have a wake up call,” said Samantha Rodriguez, a 23-year-old ELAC student. She says every time a shooting happens, she is first heartbroken, then angry. “It makes you be more aware of your surroundings, more aware of your world, more aware of your environment on a daily basis, and makes sure you stay alert on what needs to be changed, and how we can go about that.”

Rodriguez is studying psychology and is the student government vice president. Rodriguez says one of the worst parts of a mass shooting is the powerlessness that it brings. She says she feels a strong urge to protect her classmates.

“I'm just really heartbroken and saddened because I grew up in Alhambra for 18 years before coming to East L.A. College,” she says. “Now being a part of East L.A. College, more than I could ever imagine, and it being my second home, I just want to protect the community even more.”

Rodriguez says her generation has grown up watching one mass shooting after another occur closer and closer to home–and students have had enough.

“I am not done changing the world. And one day I hope that their children, their families, generations to follow will be protected because I helped with that.”

Extra Layers Of Trauma

Rodriguez says she knows that kind of change is a long journey, but she’s aiming to make better every life she meets along the way.

“I wish I could shield everyone from this devastation,” Rodriguez said. “And hopefully, one day I'm able to do a lot more.”

And shootings are often an extra layer of trauma on top of ongoing distress.

David K. Song is a Professor of Asian American Studies at East Los Angeles College, and he says his students haven’t told him of any family members involved in the recent shootings, but he has observed an overall change in students since the COVID-19 pandemic began: they are struggling emotionally.

“Since the pandemic’s begun, there has been a lot of issues around mental health,” he says. “And I think that's what's good is that we've become more aware of these issues as a society. And I think it's important to highlight that students already have a lot of stressors from just dealing with daily life, whether it's their own personal health, their work environment, or the health of their loved ones,” he said.

Which means other issues pile on, like issues “around racial discrimination, you know, Black Lives Matter, anti-Asian hate, these are all things that I feel like they have a potentially harmful effect on students,” he said.

Reminders Of Past Violence

That kind of thinking resonates with Steven Gallegos, president of ELAC’s student government.

Gallegos says that when a shooting occurs, he and his classmates aren’t just coping with that one shooting. Violent incidents bring back memories of other trauma they may have experienced in their lives. Each time a new mass shooting headline flashes in the news, Gallegos says, he relives one moment from his past. In his own words:

Gallegos says for a while, you just function — but he’s never fully healed.

“Unfortunately it's overshadowed my life ever since,” Gallegos said. “And it never goes away.”

Gallegos is studying psychology and addiction at ELAC. He believes in that better future his classmate, Samantha Rodriguez, describes.

“We're going to continue, we're going to persevere,” Gallegos says. “Not alone, but together, together as a community.”

He says this is a way he can help make the world better when it feels so violent and impossible, “to create programs that are actually sustainable and that will actually make a difference” in healing and helping others.

“We can't let the darkness overcome.”

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