Voices for Change: Karen McDonald
Welcome to the Teachers Unified podcast. I'm Sarah Lerner. This episode features Karen McDonald, a former educator and judge, current Oakland County prosecutor, and candidate for Michigan attorney general. Talks about her time in the classroom, the Oxford shooting trials, how she worked to create a foundation in the gun violence prevention space, and more. We are joined by Karen McDonald, a former educator, former circuit court judge, former prosecutor, current Oakland County prosecutor in Michigan, and has recently announced her run for attorney general of Michigan.
Speaker 1:Quite the resume. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Nice to be here.
Speaker 1:I know you were an English teacher. I am an English teacher. You did both middle and high school. I have done middle and high school. Can you tell me what brought you to education?
Speaker 2:I was not a great student. I really was frustrated and sort of bored. You know, I would get a's in English and history and then really poor grades in math and science because I wasn't interested. What I know now is that I was struggling with some attention deficit that wasn't ever recognized, and, you know, many people like me did workarounds for the majority of their life. I was just really frustrated with our public school system, and not necessarily the teachers, but I felt like even as a young kid, I've always been very civically engaged.
Speaker 2:It's not that my family was really into politics or involved. It's just that I have always looked at the world around me and wondered how to fix certain things. And I developed the belief very early, and I still have it, that our public education system is the most important thing in our country, and it is the place where we have the ability to affect the most change. You know, I loved English. I loved writing.
Speaker 2:I loved reading, but I didn't really get into that game because I, you know, always wanted to be a teacher. I really wanted to do it a little differently and, you know, make the tent a little broader in terms of resources for all kinds of students, not just the ones that, you know, sit at the front of the class and always get ace.
Speaker 1:How do you then make the transition from educator to prosecutor?
Speaker 2:A couple things. One, it was just an incredibly difficult job, and I I have never forgotten how difficult it was. You know, I was very young. I was 23 years old, stepping into a middle school class and then a high school class, and so many challenges. You know, there was the class sizes were large.
Speaker 2:There wasn't a lot of support from administration, and the parents were always you're always fighting with parents over grades, and, you know, they were either Uber advocates with no, you know, accountability or you couldn't get them involved. You know, I grew up in a house where if the teacher called or someone from the school, you were in big trouble, and nobody stopped to say, what's your side of the story? And this isn't a statement about how we need to get more authoritative in a classroom, but it is a statement about parental accountability and responsibility. Responsibility. And I'm just now, as I'm speaking, realizing how that's really come full circle in my decision to touch the parents because I've never really thought of myself as an advocate for parents need to take more responsibility.
Speaker 2:There's some issues with that position and those that take it, I think, sometimes where they miss things. But, yeah, I thought, you know, we got one shot with kids, and we can't put it all on the schools nor can we put it all on just one household.
Speaker 1:Your story, and clearly you and I are not the same. However, story very much resonates with me. I just finished my twenty third year of teaching, which I guess in regular people years is like five hundred years of teaching. My first two years were in middle school. I was 22 right out of college, and then went to high school to start year three, and I've been in high school now for the past twenty years.
Speaker 1:It is the same. Like, even in Florida, back in the two, three school year when I started, I had in one class thirty nine seventh graders. Mhmm. In another class, because I was on a team with a partner, and in the other class, I had 42. And it was either I couldn't get the parents on the phone or they were, you know, helicopter parents hovering over.
Speaker 1:And in the twenty three years I've been teaching, it's still the same thing. And it doesn't matter how affluent your area is, what the socioeconomics are. Kids are kids, parents are parents, and you're not going to necessarily have a a better or worse experience in whatever school you're in because, inherently, everyone is the same. Before we get into Oxford and the work that you've done outside the classroom and in the courtroom, I do wanna kind of talk about how we came to be. As you know, I'm a survivor from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas in 2018.
Speaker 1:Abby Clements, who is a cofounder, is a survivor from Sandy Hook. And Sari Beth Rosenberg, who's our third cofounder, thankfully, has never experienced a school shooting, but she teaches in New York City and deals with students who've experienced gun violence in their communities. We came together after the shooting at Oxford High School. We already had a group chat. We just kind of, like, enough is enough.
Speaker 1:The teacher voice, the teacher piece is what's missing
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:From this conversation about gun violence. And from that group chat, we're like, alright. Let's go. And we had our name and social media and everything up. Honestly, it felt like within an hour.
Speaker 1:Our mission is to empower educators to demand that communities are safe from gun violence. As a former educator, current prosecutor, you know, you've lived many lives. How would you suggest that educators raise their voices to get a seat at the table for real conversations about this public health crisis?
Speaker 2:I'm taking a minute to reflect on what you just said and how it's never stopped amazing me how much ripple effect that one incident had. So I applaud you and what you're doing. I think, one, doing exactly what you're doing. But, you know, I I started the foundation, all of us, and after a commission because there wasn't really a place where people could really learn about gun violence and how to keep their kids safe. I just started doing a lot of researching and studying and talking and educating myself about why has the federal government and state governments not embraced this public health crisis.
Speaker 2:And, of course, I learned it was because of the Dickey amendment that was passed, you know, over twenty years ago that prohibited CDC funding. Educating people about the root causes of gun violence way before they have their hand on a gun. And, also, schools and teachers are important in this space, but the majority of gun violence killing our kids is not targeted shooting incidents at schools. In fact, despite all of these terrible incidents, school still remains about the safest place your kid can be. The frustrating part when it comes to teachers for me, and, you know, I'm definitely gonna go in there and talk about the hard thing, is that the way that the liability is shifted and the need for coverage from, you know, these captive insurance policies really just silenced teachers.
Speaker 2:And the school district not protecting teachers in the way that they needed to be protected and listening to lawyers who did not represent the teachers or the school. They represented the insurance company. And so there was so many of them and these teachers who wanted their stories told and wanted to come forward, but were terrified of doing that. Look. I get it because in some of the lawsuits, teachers were named.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of reasons for that, whether that was a good idea or a bad one. The parents who were filing these lawsuits were being advised at a moment in time where they were extremely vulnerable. I mean, these happened right away. And then my focus was the criminal prosecution and being able to talk to teachers in a way that they would not be afraid. And the school districts, the insurance company lawyer did not make that easy because they care about one thing, and that's money.
Speaker 2:Like, sitting here today, there has not been a comprehensive investigation into what happened at the school from a perspective of the whole district and institutionally what happened and what didn't happen. I've really tried to make that happen, and the current AG has taken that on and is investigating that. But the reason I think it's so important is because there are things that happened in that school that we could learn from, but I also think it would show that most of those teachers did exactly what they were trained and and they were told to do. You know, I try to be the voice in the room when these discussions are going on saying, look. There are teachers in this school too.
Speaker 2:They want to be safe just as much as you want your child to be safe. I have a close relationship with all of the victims' families, but Molly Darnell, who's the teacher that was shot and injured that day, you know, we're the same age. We have a lot in common. And, you know, I I know what she's been through. I think it's incumbent on teachers in classrooms right now to be emboldened also through their union.
Speaker 2:That is what the union is for. And getting back to my classroom experience and what led me to politics, the person in my building who helped me as a young 23 year old middle school teacher was my union rep, and I felt mentored and protected in a way when I needed it most in the world. And so I think the teachers' unions are very strong, and I think getting this issue front and center would only be benefit to everyone.
Speaker 1:I was a union steward for twelve years, fifteen years, somewhere in there. I have been a union member since I was hired twenty three years ago. Like, that was the first thing I did. My parents were like, you're young. You're a woman.
Speaker 1:You need to join the union to protect yourself. And knock on wood, never needed them, like, a big way, but I Right. I agree. I know that you were the lead prosecutor for the Oxford shooter and his parents.
Speaker 2:I'm the elected. There's 200 people in my office, a 100 lawyers. I did participate on the team. I was not the leader. Mark Keast was was head of our litigation division.
Speaker 2:He really was the leader. I mean, he did the bulk of the work, but I did participate, and I had a lot to do with architecting, how things were going. But that's important for me.
Speaker 1:No. I I appreciate that. Thank you for clarifying. But this was a historic conviction, and it was the first time that parents were held accountable, charged with involuntary manslaughter in a school shooting case. Through this, you know, you and, by extension, your office were credited with shifting the narrative around school shootings and gun safety.
Speaker 1:What did this precedent mean not only for you, but also the larger gun violence prevention space?
Speaker 2:The idea of setting a precedent and having an impact on gun violence, that was not on my mind at all. I'd never once contemplated, oh, we're going to set precedent. And by the way, as prosecutors, we normally don't wanna do things, you know, that's too out of you know, you're you were cautious in our nature. So, I was not trying to architect a new way of holding people accountable for gun violence. I'd I'm not gonna take credit for that.
Speaker 2:But it was really just looking at the egregious set of facts and saying, you don't walk away from that. Right? And just say, well, you have some civil remedies to the families around the table saying to my team, I know this is criminal gross negligence. I know that there's a duty that we have to protect our own children if we know they're dangerous. It was, a push to let's do our research and find a way.
Speaker 2:There were lot of people around the table that were very cautious. There were some in law enforcement that's that just kind of sniffed of, like, gun control, which and, you know, as you know, I I'm not against people having guns. Just think that we all have responsibilities. But then I think my closest people just concerned about, you know, the reaction that it might evoke. And I just stood pretty steadfast about it even though the people around me were worried, and I just sat a moment and thought I might be a one term prosecutor, but I was okay with that.
Speaker 2:I really was. Some things are more important. I was I was fully you know, I'm very risk tolerant, but not in a reckless way when I make decisions. I always you know, we teach kids this. Right?
Speaker 2:Sit for a moment in the space of, okay. What if the worst scenario happens? How's that gonna feel? And that's how I make decisions. And I was fully prepared to accept the worst case scenario of of not being reelected because I thought it was the right thing to do.
Speaker 2:I was also fully prepared to accept that a jury might not convict them, though I was very certain they would. Because sometimes we get so caught up in the intricacies and, you know, the what ifs that we don't stand back and just say, well, wait a minute. Like, this is common sense. There were so many opportunities being called to the school, being shown the worksheet. You didn't do this.
Speaker 2:You didn't do that. Like, if any one of those things did not exist, we wouldn't have charged, but it was just too egregious. And so I can't say that this was some grand, you know, way of, like, addressing gun violence. What I've done, I think, on the public health side and what I hope to do more of if I'm Michigan's next attorney general is far more impactful than a prosecution because we have failed our kids. And we need to come to the table with more than, you know, run, hide, fight.
Speaker 2:We've got kids that were in Oxford and in MSU's campus when that shooting occurred. And charging the shooter with terrorism was very important to me because we have to give those victims a name. And because I did that, the hundreds of kids that were and teachers that were in the school that day qualified as victims under the Crime Victim Rights Act. And they received services, and they received the opportunity to speak at sentencing. And just creating awareness about, as you know, what that's like.
Speaker 2:You know, dealing with my own secondary trauma of just living in this for months and months and months and years and years, and I wasn't even in that building. We just have a long way to go to educate people, and we have to try to somehow shift the discussion away from just solely being on the terrible events that occurred and how to prevent because we can. We can move the needle on prevention.
Speaker 1:What impact did the shooting in Uvalde have on you after everything you experienced with Oxford?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, we know about trauma. Right? Because just asking that question, like, my skin started to like, it was everything. As soon as Oxford happened where, you know, you start with the all of that work to do, but I was desperate to try to find a commission or a task force or something that happens after something that addresses, like, how can we address this?
Speaker 2:What do I say to these parents who would approach me no matter where I travel even in the airport and across the country? Oh, you're the prosecutor. What should I do? Should I should I get my kid a a bulletproof backpack? These are the kinds of questions.
Speaker 2:And I just felt somebody has to have answers. And so I just started educating myself, and I kept looking for something that addressed this not in, like, the grand jury sort of way to, like, who's accountable, but, like, why are we here? Why in The United States Of America is gun violence the number one cause of death? Looking at automobile accidents and how we curbed that, that used to be the number one cause. Okay?
Speaker 2:So Uvalde was the first shooting after Oxford, and a lot of the processing that I did not allow myself to do or emotional reaction to Oxford, and I didn't. I had a job to do. I was I didn't go to funerals. I didn't think that was my place. I had a job to do, and I had to stay in a space where I was going to do it.
Speaker 2:Of course, with a lot of empathy compassion. But could I really allow myself to absorb what that meant to me if I was just a bystander? No. I could not. When Uvalde happened, I was the bystander.
Speaker 2:I was just the observer, and it hit me. I had to come home. I sat in front of the TV. And then to know when you've been through an incident like that on the other side and have inside information and knowing the first report is never accurate, the incessant commentary about we'll never know the motive. There There was just so much.
Speaker 2:And then I remember, my husband came home from work early because of this because I this just was not like me. And all I could say to him was, those are just such little kids. They're just so little, and they've got this gunman in there torturing them. And so I woke up the next day, and I called somebody that ended up on my commission, and he does critical incident response training and has done a lot of work on, you know, responses to school shootings. And I said, I have a question.
Speaker 2:And he said, And I said, what if I just start this myself? What if I just put it together? You know, all of the parts, not just the school safety people, but, you know, our crisis intervention teams and what's a, you know, evidence based behavioral threat assessment, and what does that model look like, and what can we do way upstream? And also getting, you know, the violence interrupters in the room and the peep the folks working on suicide and the surgeons working like, what if I just do that? And he said, I think you should.
Speaker 2:And so I did. About eighteen months later, we had people that flew in from all over, you know, on the mental health side. We had law enforcement, so we had some of the critical incident response. We had, the hard target people. But then the people who have studied this, the school of public health at University of Michigan houses the school safety.
Speaker 2:I I forget the exact name because there's so many of them. But Nicole Hockley flew up, she was sitting around the table, and we just started. I didn't ask for any money. I didn't ask for any permission. I just reached out and did it.
Speaker 2:And then we worked in subgroups, and we created protocols. And what was really important to me was that we had a website where people could go and say, okay. What should my school or employer or organization have in place? And just the basic knowledge about gun violence. We're also ignorant about it.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, we did need money. So I started my own five zero one c three and just raised money into it and then was able to hire, you know, a firm that helped us launch this. And now, you know, we've got in our office of gun violence prevention unit, and these are folks from all over the office that are doing things that we know can prevent gun violence, not just like our gang task force, you know, firearm prosecutors, but also people in our juvenile division who have identified programs and mentoring and all these things that we can help juveniles. And so I am never gonna stop talking about this. Because when I stand up in front of five people or 500 people and I say, used to be automobile accidents, what have we done?
Speaker 2:We teach kids about cars. We teach them how inherently dangerous they can be. We do the same thing with drugs and alcohol and what to do if you're set on fire and don't eat Tide pods, and we do nothing. And I I hate to go on and on, but I would like to tell something else that really inspired me. We have take your kid to work day at my office, and they always it's a very important thing for me because I really honor parents in the workplace.
Speaker 2:And they came to me and said, what should we do for some programming with the kids? And I said, how about we do something on gun safety? Okay. So we separated them into two groups. We had the littles.
Speaker 2:They were, like, three to seven. And I addressed everybody, and then they were gonna do this thing. And one of our investigators were was going to do it. And I stuck around. I said, hey.
Speaker 2:Are you all set to do this? He's like, yeah. I drew the short straw. I said, what do you mean? And he said, there's just not anything out there.
Speaker 2:There's stuff to teach kids how to handle a gun, but not really prevention things for kids. He said, I found something, like, you see a gun, whatever. So I decided to stay. And I sat around the circle with these kids, and I asked, who here knows what you should do if you see a gun? And it was just silent.
Speaker 2:This one kid raised his hand. His dad was, like, in the office, has always owned firearms. He's a hunter. That kid knew. Oh, don't touch it.
Speaker 2:Okay? Who knows if you have a gun? Can you just leave it around, or what are you supposed to do if if people have guns? That kid's the only one. You gotta keep it locked.
Speaker 2:Okay. We started teaching. Okay. Well, if you see a gun, don't touch it. It can be dangerous.
Speaker 2:And then one little kid raises their hand and says, well, wait a minute. Don't you need the guns to get the bad guys? And, you know, the investigators, law enforcement looking at me, and I said, well, yes. Sometimes. The police should have the guns.
Speaker 2:And then another kid, well, but what if the bad guy comes to your house? Don't you need to have a gun? It was that moment I realized we've taught them nothing. And and in my community, a lot of times, hear parents say, like, oh, we just don't talk about it. We do not talk about guns in our house.
Speaker 2:We don't have guns. And I'm like, okay. Well, there's more guns on the street than people, and we're not gonna talk to kids. I mean, that's just the basics. I'm not even talking about the way upstream prevention stuff.
Speaker 2:Like, we haven't even taught people that guns are actually inherently dangerous. You don't know if they're loaded. You don't know if the safety's on. You don't know what kind weapon it is. You don't know if it's a toy gun or a real gun, and we've done nothing.
Speaker 1:So and I've shared this on the show before. When I was 15, I lived in New York, if you can't hear it in my voice. I did. My friend Andrew was at his friend's house. The dad was a police officer.
Speaker 1:They were looking at or messing around with the gun. It went off, and Andrew was shot and killed. And that was in 1995. I am 45 years old, and I carry that with me long before I was in this, like, survivor space.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I have two children. They're 19 and 16. And when they were little, before I was a school shooting survivor, I always asked and made sure I knew if there were weapons in the homes of friends when they went to play. Mhmm. In doing that, like, never sat down and had a conversation with them or my husband with them either about what to do with a gun because we don't have guns in our house.
Speaker 1:But asking those questions to the friend's parents in front of my kids, we had that conversation, and they knew mom might be a little crazy, but mom is concerned. I just want my kids to be safe, and I wanted them to come home in one piece, whether subconsciously because of, you know, what I experienced with my friend passing away. But I've also had students who have either committed suicide or attempted suicide. I don't know if I've ever talked about this on the show. But at my last school where I taught for ten years, before I got to Stoneman Douglas, I had a student who seemed fine at school, was talking to friends on the bus, went home and shot himself in the head and survived.
Speaker 1:But where the bullet went in, and I I don't know all the the nuances to it, but it severed his optic nerve, and he is blind. That was a really hard thing as a teacher, because he was on my newspaper staff, to present that to his friends and the students who worked so closely with him. We all know that school shootings are such a small piece of gun violence, and I'm gonna jump ahead of myself a little bit in my questions. But when I met with your team to prepper the episode, someone had mentioned that recently a three year old brought a gun to a daycare in Oakland County.
Speaker 2:Well, his mom did.
Speaker 1:Well, yes. Inadvertently, the child had it in their backpack. In his backpack. Yeah. Having the conversations with the kids is great, but if they don't listen or if the mom puts a gun in the backpack, like, all of these things don't fit within, you know, the normal parameters of, you know, gun violence prevention.
Speaker 1:For this kid who accidentally brought the gun or unknowingly brought the gun to daycare Mhmm. What impact did this have on you and on the community?
Speaker 2:I mean, that's not the only we we've had in the last six weeks three separate incidences. Two that resulted in deaths and one very young child shot himself because either a gun was left out or the younger people, they are technically adults, but messing around with a gun when they were just hanging out. But look. Here's what I think about that. First, when you tell a story about your student, we haven't taught kids, a, what signs to look for, and then also, b, what they do when they see them and have something to address it, right, which is part of the protocols on our foundation.
Speaker 2:And we didn't invent anything. We just literally gathered information and people that had been siloed. The community and society IQ in general is very low. That mom who has that gun probably also is very uninformed. She doesn't view that firearm the way that she should.
Speaker 2:Kids know you have to wear a seat belt. There I still remember a time where you didn't have to wear seat belts because I'm gonna be 55 and how the struggle was at first with people. They weren't used to wearing seat belts. Everyone wears a seat belt now. They just do.
Speaker 2:You can't get in the car and not wear a seat belt. Your kids would have a fit. They've always learned you gotta wear a seat belt. Everyone knows in an airport, if you see a bag, like, that's problem if it's by itself. Right?
Speaker 2:We didn't just wake up one day and learn that. It was a public health and safety initiative that was rolled out evidence based and like a public health approach. Smoking. I lived in a house where my mom smoked. And, you know, I was born in '70, so that was just like, you just don't see people smoking anymore, you know, and she eventually quit.
Speaker 2:But we've taught our society what are dangers, and that doesn't mean we ban cigarettes. In an effort that comes from a lot of places to make sure nobody is limited from owning a weapon, we haven't done any of the other stuff that we need to do. And you can do both things. You don't have to ban firearms to make them safer. Look.
Speaker 2:These are tragic, awful things, but the way I cope with these dark things in the world is to get up every day and try to do something about it. It's the only way I know how.
Speaker 1:Can you talk about the All of Us Foundation? I know you've you mentioned it earlier and you've alluded to it, but can you share with everybody what it is?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's the commission that I brought together after Uvalde and after months and months of issuing protocols. Then I started the nonprofit. I always mention this too because I'm elected. So I was raising money into that, but I'm also always having to raise money to keep my job.
Speaker 2:So then we were able to to launch this with the firm. We're at a point now where we have that in place, and we're trying to grow that to partners and schools and organizations. The main thing for me was having a place where parents could go online and, you know, they take a quiz about their own IQ on gun violence and say, you know, it's hard for parents because they need to know what to ask for. Like, for instance, the night locks that were installed in Oxford, they really saved a lot of kids' lives. Those are the hard measures, but also information that altogether about, like, what can you be doing in your home right now on gun violence prevention?
Speaker 2:And I'm not just talking about teaching kids to be safe around firearms. I'm talking about teaching kids about their feelings and what they are and techniques to move through adversity and distress and giving them tools way before they hit middle school and suddenly have significant depression or anxiety. And now we try to go find therapists. And it's almost like the worst time to be teaching kids adversity tolerance. That that's a huge part of gun violence prevention.
Speaker 2:I wanted just a place where that was all in one. You know, does your school have a evidence based gold standard behavioral threat assessment? Because it should. What is your school or organization doing or employer when you do recognize and identify that someone's in distress or doing something that is disturbing? A lot of times, they fire people while you've just increased your chance of a targeted shooting.
Speaker 2:We have the no notoriety folks where you'll you'll never hear me say the shooter's name ever. And I refused to say it, and I filed a motion in court saying we shouldn't be using his name. And everyone's like, you can't do that, but then the defense just agreed. The other thing I wouldn't do is turn over any of the videos of the shooting. And, of course, my team was like, you can't do that.
Speaker 2:They have to the defense attorneys. And I'm like, well, then come in and watch them if they want. If the Michigan Supreme Court tells me I have to, fine. It's a public health issue. The minute those videos are released, they'll be leaked.
Speaker 2:And the Oxford shooter was viewing images and information about, like, the Parkland shooter and minutes before he committed that. So I'm just not gonna ignore that. How have
Speaker 1:you worked to amplify the issue of secure storage and this clear need for a culture shift.
Speaker 2:After Oxford, the Michigan legislature did pass some safe storage legislation. I see that more as an effort to educate and and make people aware. I did the closings in both trials. In the trial for dad, he's the one that legally purchased the weapon just days before for the shooter, and the cable lock that was given to them with the firearm was still in its packaging. It never even they never even took it out.
Speaker 2:In the closing, I took the murder weapon, and I took a cable lock identical to the one that was never opened, and I installed it in front of the jury. And a really kind of interesting story behind that is that, you know, we were talking about what to do and, you know, it was so easy to prevent. It takes seconds. And somebody said, like, it would be really cool if you install that cable lock in front of the jury. And I was like, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, it would be. And then I left, and later on, they told me everyone was furious at him. Like, why would you tell her to do that? That's a terrible idea. What if it doesn't work?
Speaker 2:What if this? What if that? And they got a augment. They like, oh, you can't do it. You can't do it.
Speaker 2:And I was fine. Fine. Fine. I won't do it. They were getting all worried about it.
Speaker 2:When we went down to do the closings, I took the cable lock, the one we're using as an example that was identical, and I just put it in my purse. And when I got to the courtroom, I told my OIC, who's now lieutenant Willis, and I'm like, hold on to this cable lock for me. And during my closing, started putting the gloves on. And and if you watch it, you'll see, like, Mark, who was our lead prosecutor, just staring. Everyone was so nervous it wouldn't work.
Speaker 2:But I I knew it would because it's that easy. Anyway, I installed it right in front of the jury, and I said that took about ten seconds. They did a story, one of the local broadcasters after the trial with a couple gun sales stores stores, and there was an increase in people that came in and asked for cable locks after that. And I'm really proud them.
Speaker 1:As you should be. You have a very strong stance on this. The governor of your state, Gretchen Whitmer, she has a very strong stance on gun violence prevention, and Michigan has done so much, you know, moving to preventing additional tragedies. How are other states responding to you and governor Whitmer and just Michigan in general being so strong on this responsibility piece?
Speaker 2:I think there are a lot of people that would take issue with that conclusion because I'm a get things done sort of person. We passed safe storage, and we passed some, you know, emergency protection. But testified twice, and I said to the legislature, this is great. This is not enough. This is not gonna be solved by one thing.
Speaker 2:It has to be the whole public health approach, which starts with education and all of these other things. And I think there's a lot of strong statements about it, but I don't think we've done anything, really. We've got pockets of places where schools are adopting this and we're talking about it, but we need an initiative and we need to apply it and we need to see it actually has to happen. And I think, you know, there are several reasons why I made the decision to run for attorney general, but that's a big driving force because that is absolutely part of what an attorney general does, where the, you know, the attorney general is the the lawyer for the people, And gun violence prevention is absolutely in at the AG's wheelhouse. I know that AG feels very strong about this issue as well, but I do think there is a lot of potential in addressing this in a statewide prevention model that doesn't just focus on, you know, this one little piece of what hard measures do we need in schools.
Speaker 2:Like, okay. That's great. But that's not really gonna solve the problem.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at it comparatively to Florida where I live. And, you know, we have a state legislature that is rolling back laws that were put in place after the shooting at my school, lowering the age back from 21 to 18, and permitless carry, and all of these other things that go on. I'm hopeful that in states looking at what Michigan has done, and while you say it's not enough, it's certainly more than other states are doing. So I just I just wonder if other states are kind of looking at the breadth of everything that has happened in Michigan kind of as a blueprint of what those states can do.
Speaker 2:I certainly think so for I mean, I think that we're leaders in a lot of ways, and I think our voices are strong and that takes those strong voices at the beginning of any movement. I also wanna say this. We look at these issues sometimes, and immediately, the call to action is call your legislator. Call congress. I think it makes more sense to flip that.
Speaker 2:All the people you're talking about are elected officials. They aren't going to do anything unless the people who elect them care about something. And it's important to apply that pressure, but we can't skip over the education piece that groups like yours and mine are doing. Because you know what? Let them, to quote Mel Robbins, let them.
Speaker 2:Let the legislature take away all of the protections that are so personal and important to you, an illogical, ridiculous notion that it's it's somehow protecting somebody's liberty because it isn't. But let them do that because the reality is you don't need them to teach parents about how to protect their kids. You don't need them. And I gotta tell you, one of the surprises in all of this is that backlash and, you know, I probably won't be reelected again. It never came.
Speaker 2:In fact, the largest group of people who have supported me all over the country, all over the world, is from responsible gun owners who support that prosecution. And what that prosecution. What that tells me as well as all the experiences and conversations I have all over the state is that this transcends politics. And the data shows this too. Right?
Speaker 2:The majority of Americans do believe that there should be some reasonable common sense legislation, you have to go upstream, like any public health issue, like drinking and driving, smoking. You don't find kids I mean, there's vaping. There's always gonna be a something, but, like, you don't find kids smoking at the rate that they used to. We have educated people about why, and we need to do that. And it's groups like you that go, you know, talk to parents and say, hey.
Speaker 2:Did you know that something like adversity tolerance and emotional intelligence and mentoring and things like that are actually a great way to start with gun violence prevention. Did you know about what a a real behavioral threat assessment is? Did you know that we can develop care teams and communities and schools so that we don't just need a therapist that you probably can't find anyway and you're gonna be on a waiting list forever? Did you know that you can create multidisciplinary teams, not just in schools, but in the workplace, in the organizations? Did you know these things?
Speaker 2:And, also, you know, we have the Be Smart program in Michigan, but it's very much just geared towards trying to teach parents about safe storage and what to do. But there's nothing about why aren't we teaching kids in public schools or in any school about how to stay away from a firearm? I mean, the only group that has been embracing this for a while and advocating is the medical profession. That's it. You know?
Speaker 2:And, yeah, look. It's a setback. We finally had the surgeon general say it's a public health crisis and Trump was elected, and they immediately removed that. And they removed the gun violence prevention office. But I don't have time for the legislature.
Speaker 2:I don't have time to wait until the administration comes along and embraces it. We don't have time for that. We have kids that are dying, and there are things we can do on the ground. And I I think that we've gotta start really talking about the hard things when it comes to this, which is that protesting our elected officials and filling up their inboxes and all of that, it's not the most effective way. Not saying don't do it.
Speaker 2:You know, I get this a lot when you've commissioned and and, you know, the foundation. So what are you doing on, like, legislation change? And, look, it's not that I don't think that's important, but if I can't get this army of moms, a lot of moms, and parents and people to embrace and even educate them on what needs to be done, you are not gonna get a legislature to do it. And by the way, we gotta teach first, and we have to make this part of our public IQ on how to protect ourselves before you go to a legislator who probably doesn't have the time or the bandwidth or the support to tackle that. And, also, what do we do?
Speaker 2:These things happen. We all, you know, march on the capital. We yell about guns, and then everybody sort of fizzles out because there's not much to do. It's really frustrating, and then we just wait for the next one to happen. That advocacy and that voice is really important, and it's what's changed so many things in history.
Speaker 2:But we're missing missing this education piece, and we can be doing that in our own communities with my foundation, with yours, with all of the things we're talking about. Because nobody asks what party I'm affiliated with if I've got information that might protect their kid. It is not a political issue.
Speaker 1:No. And it shouldn't be. It should be a safety issue and a public health issue. You recently announced your campaign for attorney general. I would like to play your campaign video, and then I have some follow-up questions if that's okay.
Speaker 2:Sure. As the people's lawyer, the attorney general represents everyone across Michigan, from our children and most vulnerable to business owners to seniors, every single one of us. The attorney general protects our freedoms, upholds the law, and keeps our communities safe. That's what I've done my whole career. I'm Karen McDonald, and I grew up in a small town in Michigan.
Speaker 2:I was a teacher who went to law school, an attorney who became a judge, and a judge who left the bench to become the Oakland County prosecutor. It wasn't the most conventional or easy path, but I'm drawn to where I can do the most good. So when a mass shooting devastated our community, I tried the case myself, secured a landmark victory A historic verdict in Michigan. And advanced the movement for gun violence prevention. Because I told the victim's parents I'd fight for them as if those kids were my own.
Speaker 2:And that's how I'll serve as your attorney general. Because we don't need to fight about everything, but Michigan needs a fighter. So when it's your loved one in this chair, when it's your neighbor, when it's you, when I am the attorney general, know that I will fight for you.
Speaker 1:Top priorities of your campaign, prevent and address gun violence, keep kids and families and communities safe. Right. Forgive me for asking the obvious, but of all the other issues that could be a focal point Mhmm. Why is this so important to you?
Speaker 2:Because our kids are dying, and, it's the number one cause of death for kids. Equally important as the AG protecting the people of Michigan from those that may seek to take away vital resources that we need for families to thrive and to have good public education systems and resources to mental health concerns, those are all part of keeping kids safe, and they actually relate to gun violence as well. If the bill that's being proposed passes, it will limit access for 700,000 people in Michigan to Medicaid. We're taking away critical resources from kids and families, and that ripple effect is almost too large to contemplate. And it goes far beyond, you know, trying to save a few bucks.
Speaker 1:I watched a clip of sins of the parents. Can you share what the film was about, the impact it had, and the larger message contained within?
Speaker 2:I had no control over the doc, and the prosecution was definitely a focus. But the things that it highlighted, for instance, in the Saint Juliana home where they lost Hannah, were, I think, really important. They tried to do a lot in a ninety minute show. I'd say that the Washington Post article by John Cox, who really did embed with us for months, we had lots and lots of requests, and John has made gun violence and kids a focus of his career. He wrote a book called Children Under Fire.
Speaker 2:He's interviewed victims of school shootings, and he stood on a long history of doing work and really high quality journalism to educate what that was like. So I agreed to let him spend time with us behind the scenes as we prepared, not knowing, of course, whether we would be successful or not. He wrote a long form article in the post, and I would recommend anyone who's really interested in the prosecution to read it. The Hulu doc is, I think, also the producer on that produced a documentary called Parkland Rising. And so that was one of the reasons we agreed to do that.
Speaker 2:I gave that kind of access, although theirs was much more limited, because when you think about things like wrongful convictions, we only know about wrongful convictions because of Netflix. It was important to me, whether we were successful or not, that the public understood what this looks like. I watched that once and then snippets a couple times. Like, I can't watch that. I think it will serve as a a point where it educates people.
Speaker 2:It also educates the families, you know, got a chance to talk and address the issue of the school and what went wrong, and it still hasn't been addressed. Like, that's important. It's a mixed bag, you know, those documentaries.
Speaker 1:I do. And I was in Parkland Rising, and I participated through, like, my capacity as the yearbook adviser because some of my students were, you know, key participants in the film. And I did a panel in Miami at a a film festival, and on the panel were Manny and Patricia Oliver, Joaquin's parents. And, you know, clearly, they had a much larger role in the doc than I did. I think I was in it for, like, thirty seconds.
Speaker 1:But they are hard to watch. Whether you've lived through it or not, these things are very hard to watch. But at the same time, they're so important.
Speaker 2:They are. I mean, but you
Speaker 1:know The stories matter. It is hard.
Speaker 2:The way people talk about it who consume that, it's entertainment to them. And not in a bad way, but it is entertainment. And so I'm sure you experienced this to a much greater degree than I do. It amazes me how conversational and casual people are when they approach me about this whole case. Equally, there are people and it's so interesting because by nature, I'm a pretty empathic person, but I can tell even three feet away when someone's walking towards me that they're gonna talk to me about Oxford in an emotional way.
Speaker 2:I can always tell because there's a look they have. And I'm not saying just people who were there or knew somebody. Somebody has a story that emotionally impacted them that, you know, through Oxford or because of Oxford and why it mattered to them and the prosecution. And I can't tell you how many times I've stood in, like, very busy crowded rooms or places in airports in tears with people, and I always stop. It's hard.
Speaker 2:You get dragged in this emotional place out of nowhere, but I am always there for it because I think part of what we all have to do here is make sure that these people who've gone through these things are seen. You know? It takes a lot of emotional courage, but probably everything that matters does. And then on the other side of this, I have to take the scrutiny. The the whole defense theory was that this was all my doing, you know, an attention grab and or a political move to, you know, climb the ranks, which just makes me chuckle because, like, nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 2:Even my decision to run for AG has been one that I did not decide quickly. And so there's a lot of critique I get from that, but you just gotta weigh what what's the value? And when you let somebody in on your personal life, it's hard. But in order for those stories to be told in a way that that are compelling and people want to read and watch them, there has to be a personal component. Completely.
Speaker 2:I find as a survivor that I live kind of
Speaker 1:in this duality. Like, I am reluctant and hesitant to often share where I teach because I know it could open me up to a whole gaggle of questions that I am unable to answer. Before the trial and everything, I mean, I have never used his name at all, nor will I ever. Mhmm. But I couldn't speak to anything related to the trial.
Speaker 1:You know, like, there were just things I couldn't talk about, not out of, like, a gag order. I just didn't have the information. Right. The other side of it is I am always so willing and so happy. Maybe happy is the wrong word.
Speaker 1:I yes. Thank you. I'm I'm open to sharing my story because it's important, and people need to hear it because I'm here to talk about it. You know, I survived. But I live in this space where I wanna talk about it, but unlike my terms.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna find a forced conversation where, you know, oh, what do you do? Well, I'm a teacher. Where do you teach? And then I get the, oh, did you know him? Were you there that day?
Speaker 1:You're there. Yeah. You know? And it's very invasive questions.
Speaker 2:And It's you know, what it is, it's vulnerability. That at any moment, like, you can just be completely unzipped and have all of this come out, and it it's not reciprocal. Reciprocal. And, also, you don't really wanna be identified like that. It is large part of your identity.
Speaker 2:I just had a conversation with Molly Darnell about this, and she feels exactly the same way you do. I obviously am not a victim of that incident. I'm just associated with it, and I just have a hard time talking about it like it's any old prosecution because it was emotionally and personally very difficult. It was three prosecutions. The shooter's, you know, sentencing hearing on his life without parole was just about one of the most emotionally traumatizing proceedings I've ever been involved with.
Speaker 2:But people talk to me about it like it's just another one of my cases. Look. I just come clean immediately because otherwise I get, you look so familiar. So I just come clean. That part just really gets to me.
Speaker 2:A lot my life personally has changed so much. I, you have security a lot of times where I go. Just when you're in the public eye and it was so publicized, there's a lot of other concerns, and I've lost a lot of anonymity. And so I've become someone who doesn't really socialize with people. I I mean, I try.
Speaker 2:It's just like every once in a while, I have conversations with people who Mark and I are quite close, really feel like the two of us are the only ones we can speak to about what this was like. You know, we stayed in this space for two and a half years preparing, and we were also the people that when the victim's parents, like, they got angry sometimes, and they're angry at us. It was tough. It was really tough. I think that's where I usually go when I wanna feel seen about this.
Speaker 2:I do sometimes say, is there ever gonna be a going back to normal?
Speaker 1:No. This is your normal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Over the seven years, I have actively avoided certain situations. In 2018, that was my twenty year high school reunion, and it would have been in August, I think, like six months after the shooting. And I didn't go because I wasn't prepared six months out to have that conversation about what had just happened. Mhmm. When you're in this space, the firsthand trauma, it's the secondhand trauma.
Speaker 1:It's, you know, finding that person like you have Mark because you went through this together. I have the people at my school. But then moving out to the second level, I have Abby. I have gotten to know some of the teachers from Oxford. Amy Stevens and I, I check-in on her all the time Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And teachers and people from other places. So you kind of build this community and this family in what I call the shittiest club in America. You will never go back to who you were before the trial. Mhmm. Just like I will never go back to who I was before the fire alarm went off.
Speaker 1:And I hate the phrase like, oh, this is my new normal. Mhmm. But it is. This is the abnormal, normal life that we live Mhmm. In this space.
Speaker 1:Paula Reid, who is a Columbine teacher survivor, came to our community a little before the one year mark, and I have had her on the show recently. And I reminded her of something she said to us, and I'm going to misquote it terribly. Something along the lines of, you have to learn to love who you are now because you will never be the person you were before. And true. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You know, and I'm sure you found this both personally and professionally. I am not the same person I was, and yet, in so many ways, I am. Yeah. But other things, I am, like, either hyperaware, hypervigilant, or I just don't care. Like, it just doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker 1:It's a very fine line to walk, and you have to find that balance because, you know, you wanna operate in the before time, but you're present now. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Totally. Totally makes sense. I was in a prosecutor's association conference two years ago, and somebody came in. And one of the women actually was involved in a school shooting when was present, and then there was a law enforcement.
Speaker 2:It was basically on trauma and how to help trauma informed dealing with victims, and she was showing us the brain scans and about what somebody's brain looks like after experiencing trauma and came to her on the break, and I I introduced myself. She said, oh, I I know who you are. And I said, I just I'm just interested. I wonder if, like, this secondary, like, what we've been doing and my role here with the victims and, you know, watching these images and being there with them, that my brain also has changed. And she said, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:For sure, your brain looks like the second slide. Was just, like, looking at her. I'm like, well, but I don't know. She's like, oh, no. No.
Speaker 2:No. It does. There are things that you just have to make yourself do. The hardest part for me is owning that because I feel so strongly, you know, for the first year, people would say, oh my gosh. Is is everything okay with you?
Speaker 2:And I would say I must have said a 100 times, do not feel bad for me. I did not lose a kid in school that day. I am not a victim of that shooting. Do not feel bad for me. But that eventually, like, came to a boiling point after the hearing where Mark and I prepared for the sentencing hearing, and we were just listening to these stories for hours and days.
Speaker 2:And nobody else in the office even knew because this is, like, witness prep. You know, I'm the one that had to put Christie Gibson Marshall on the stand and ask her about confronting the shooter and trying to resuscitate Tate and finding him. And then I had to worry about everyone else who was hearing this for the first time. And I think it was that. And then when we told the parents if they wanted to see the video, that they could.
Speaker 2:Nicole, who is Madison's mom, asked me very early on, and I'll you know, I I've always told the parents, you can see whatever you wanna see. I'm never gonna keep anything from you. So Nicole wanted to see that. She still had a lot of questions about how Madison died, and her real concern has always been, you know, I just hope that she wasn't afraid. And Madison died because her instinct at the time like, Nicole is always struggling because the door was, like, six feet away, and her boyfriend she was walking with escaped.
Speaker 2:But when Madison heard the shooting and sounds of it, she crouched down and covered her her head. He he shot her at point blank range. And Nicole wanted to see that, and she wanted to know. It was before the trial. It was at least a year and a half.
Speaker 2:And I knew that I had I was gonna be doing that myself. Mark and I were doing it ourselves. I was calling all these people and these experts on trauma and, you know, the psychiatrists and the PhDs. Like, I wanna make sure I'm gonna do this in a way that isn't gonna retraumatize. And finally, somebody said to me, okay.
Speaker 2:Listen. This would be challenging for any professional. Your plan seems fine, but, like, this is not easy. And so she came in. The first thing I did is I told her, I'm I wanna tell you what you're gonna see before you see it.
Speaker 2:And I told her, and it was like watching someone find out all over again. But she still wanted to see it, and we showed it to her. And it was, you know, her the pain that she was experiencing because of it. By the way, you know what she said when she found out that she crouched down? She said, we teach those kids to hide.
Speaker 2:But the thing I will never forget is sitting next to her, like, physically anchoring her, and then her partner was on the other side. We played her the video, and she saw it. It was very hard. And then she said, can you play it back? She had to stop the image right before Madison turned the corner.
Speaker 2:You could just you could see the back of her, and she had the backpack on. And Nicole reached up and and held out her hands, and she said, you know, I I didn't know how she wore her hair that day, and she just tried to savor it. You know? And it was just so heartbreaking as a parent. You know?
Speaker 2:It it was just so heartbreaking. But in some strange way, it's like, god gives you these roles, and I was there. And I tried to do it with the most respect and honor that I could. She came back a week later because I told her, if you want the backpack, you can have the backpack. And she said, just look at it.
Speaker 2:If there's blood on the backpack, I don't want it. And so I called her, and I Nicole, I have the backpack here, and I went through it. And there's a little bit of blood on it, but I would want it. And so she came in, and she was, like, somehow just lighter. It's like that thing that was sitting out there that she didn't know was really weighing on her.
Speaker 2:But she came in, and she picked to back back up, and she just smelled like she wanted the smell. And I also could relate to that so much as a mother. You know? And then we had a really long conversation that was not about that at all. I think having that front row seat, which I chose.
Speaker 2:Right? This is not something prosecutors normally do. It's definitely not something that the elected would do. They would assign those things to somebody else. I chose to do that.
Speaker 2:I don't really know why, but I I don't regret it. I also chose nobody knows this. In prep and I think it was maybe just not only a month after when all the evidence came in, I went through in my office one day, maybe just a 100 of the photos of the victims, both in the school and in the medical examiner, all of the photos, every single one of them. And I was not doing it because I needed it to prepare. I felt strongly that parents were never gonna see those photos, hopefully, but that somebody who was a mom was looking to look at this.
Speaker 2:And, you know, when I say in the ad, like, I said I'd treat those kids like my own, there are a lot of people who will tell you that it's just, like, the worst idea ever and not best practice, and I get it. But I think that if if those were my kids, I would want that. When we were preparing with the officers like Tim Willis, who I have so much respect for, and Wags, we call him Wags, the computer guy, They were really struggling with that hearing. And I said, guys, look. This isn't a robotic thing.
Speaker 2:This isn't any old testimony. Like, you're gonna have to you've told me this is, like, the biggest, most worst thing you've ever seen. And I'm like, it's a it's a sentencing hearing. And Wags said, ma'am he doesn't call me that anymore. Ma'am, I can't do it.
Speaker 2:If I let my guard down, I will get emotional. I will cry. And I looked at him, and I said, do you think those parents would at least like to know that this impacted you? Because that is the greatest amount of respect that you can give them. But then with those two officers, that literally led to days and days of, like, they struggled.
Speaker 2:They really struggled. And it was a lot of very emotional testimony, but I just kept saying to Mark, this is what it looks like, and everyone should know it. This is what it looks like. I'm not sanitizing one thing because this is what it looks like, and people, we we all need to know what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. Don't forget to follow teachers unified to end gun violence on Instagram and threads at teachers unify, and follow the podcast on both platforms at teachers unify p c.