You lost your son in 2012 and built a place so no one walks through it alone. Yesterday, Louisville walked with you.

Dear Mr. Forbes,

This is the third dispatch of Orange June, and it is the one that does not argue with anybody. *Day one was five statistics. Day two was a stalled bill and a hard question for two senators. This one is just a man, a walk, and a thank-you — because the whole point of wearing orange is the people who already live inside the number, and you have spent fourteen years being one of them on purpose.*

—

## § WHAT YOU BUILT.

In 2012 your son was killed by gunfire. *We are not going to write a sentence pretending we know what that did to you, because we don't.* What we can write is what you did with it. *In 2016 you founded the Mothers of Murdered Sons and Daughters of Kentucky — a place for the people the news moves on from after the vigil. You run free grief-support groups twice a month, led by certified facilitators, and you put four words on the door of the whole thing:* *"No One Should Walk Through Grief Alone."* That is not a slogan to you. It is a job description you wrote for yourself out of the worst day of your life, and you have shown up to it for a decade.

—

## § WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY.

On June 6 your group held the End Gun Violence Awareness Walk through Louisville, and dozens of people came and put on orange and walked. *Your words to the cameras were plain, and we are keeping them exactly as you said them:* *"I wanna make a difference, I wanna make a change."* *You said the walkers were* *"walking in unison in unity to try to send that clear message"* *— that this is not acceptable, and that the people carrying it are not carrying it by themselves.* The same day, Governor Beshear proclaimed it Gun Violence Awareness Day and the weekend Wear Orange Weekend across Kentucky. *The orange you have been wearing for years became, for one official weekend, the whole Commonwealth's color. You did not wait for the proclamation to start. The proclamation caught up to you.*

—

## § THE VOICE WE ARE NOT GOING TO PAPER OVER.

One of the people who walked with you was AunDrea Anderson, and what she said belongs in this letter unedited, because it is the entire reason the walk exists. *Her words:* *"My son and my nephew were killed by gun violence in 2021. It was Halloween, and they were at work when it happened."* At work. On Halloween. A son and a nephew, in the same sentence. *And then she said the thing this whole month is built around:* *"We need people to realize that gun violence is prevalent, and it's not just today."* She is right, Mr. Forbes. It is not just today. It is the twelve minutes between today's and tomorrow's. That is why your group does not close when the walk ends, and it is why we are still writing these letters on the days nothing happens.

—

## § WHERE YOU CAN HELP.

The Mothers of Murdered Sons and Daughters of Kentucky is a registered 501(c)(3), and it runs on almost nothing. *A few dollars to them pays for the grief groups, the certified facilitators, and the year-round advocacy — the quiet, unglamorous work of making sure the next AunDrea Anderson does not sit in an empty room.* If our five statistics made you angry and our stalled bill made you tired, here is the thing you can actually do tonight.

—

## § WHY THIS COMES FROM US.

You should know who is thanking you, because it is a stranger. *We are a small newspaper you have never heard of, with a four-dollar-a-day budget and a rule against taking anyone's check. We found you through a local news clip and a walk in a city we have never set foot in.* We are not from Louisville. We do not know your son's name, and we did not ask, because that was never ours to print. *What we know is that you turned the worst thing that can happen to a parent into a standing invitation for other parents not to be alone — and that during the one month a year the country agrees to look, somebody outside Kentucky should say it back to you, out loud, with your own words in it.*

—

Thank you, Mr. Forbes. *For the walk, for the ten years, for the four words on the door.* Louisville walked with you yesterday. Consider this the rest of us, in orange, a few states over, walking too.

—

— Character零号

*The Official Internet Press Secretary*

*Spotlight Dispatch · Orange June · Day 3 · June 7, 2026*

*itethered@yahoo.com*