Today marks 10 years since the Pulse tragedy. It's hard to believe it's been a decade since the lives of 49 people - with their own goals and dreams - were taken. Although time has passed our community continues to send love to their families, survivors and each person impacted.
It’s not just Iran.
It’s Lebanon.
In less than 2 weeks, Israel has killed 570 people and displaced 750,000 — over 10% of the entire country. Residential buildings are being bombed with no warning.
The U.S. cannot continue to be complicit in Netanyahu’s wars.
BREAKING:
This is Beirut right now.
Israel is MASSIVELY bombing Lebanon’s capital in the middle of the night — deliberately wiping out apartment block after apartment block.
Civilian homes. Residential buildings.
No justification. Just pure terror.
"My name is Max, I'm 11 years old, my family is Jewish.
I go to school here in Pasadena, at my school they teach us to be upstanders,
And I'm here to stand up for the kids in Palestine that shouldn't have to die in this genocide."
👏🏻
@NickJFuentes Israel just destroyed what Christians in Lebanon believe to be the mausoleum of Simon Peter, the apostle of Christ, in the village of Shama in southern Lebanon
1,925–1,995 years old.
Would Randy Fine, Mark Levin, and Israel Blaubour mouth speak out against this crime?
Man. #Hurricane#MELISSA. Incredible power. Perhaps the mightiest hurricane of the 83 I've witnessed.
My location (Crawford, a tiny beach town in St. Elizabeth Parish #Jamaica) took the full force of the inner right eyewall and may have seen the peak winds in this historic, record-smashing hurricane.
First pic: as it started to get scary. Bone-rattling gusts were making roofs explode into clouds of lethal confetti. The grand palm tree out front was starting to bend obscenely—in a way I found unnatural.
Second pic: after we bolted the door shut because it was getting too dangerous even to watch the storm. (I'd randomly ended up in the hotel's kitchen with a local family.)
The hurricane's inner eyewall was a screaming white void. All I could see through the cracks in the shutters was the color white—accompanied by a constant, ear-splitting scream that actually caused pain. (Notice the woman in the pic holding her ears.) The scream occasionally got higher and angrier, and those extra-screechy screams made my eardrums pulse. Meanwhile, water was forcing in through every crack—under the floor and between the window slats.
I remember shuddering at the thought of what was happening to the town—what this screaming white void was doing to people, homes, communities.
My fears were well-founded. The impact in this part of coastal St. Elizabeth Parish is catastrophic. Wooden structures were completely mowed down and in some cases swept from their foundations. Some concrete structures collapsed. The well-built ones—like my hotel—survived, but even they had major roof, window, and door damage. The landscape has been stripped bare—the trees just sticks. The roads are blocked with rubble and utility poles.
Nearby Black River—a unique old historical town right on the water—was smashed beyond recognition: historical sites destroyed, main streets filled with rubble, the town market twisted like a pretzel, even the regional hospital destroyed.
It's a good thing I wasn't in my hotel room during the storm because one of the windows blew out, showering the bed with glass and wood. The hotel lost most of its roof, and several third-story rooms were smashed open. But in the lower flooors, those grand old concrete walls protected us. And so far I'm aware of only two deaths in Crawford—a fellow who had a heart attack at the school next door (his body was still in his car and unclaimed the next morning, a sad and disturbing sight), and a woman who drowned in the storm surge in Gallon Beach. While walking down the devastated streets of Black River, I ran into the Jamaican Member of Parliament for this region, @floydgreenja. He's a great dude and I appreciate that he already has a gameplan for turning this catastrophe into an opportunity—to build this region back better. And I vowed on the spot that I'm going to make it my mission to spread awareness of this catastrophe and get that aid flowing in. I'll be talking about MELISSA a lot over the coming months—because it is both a fascinating meteorological event and a human disaster that demands an international response. (And I swear an epic video is coming out of this.)