(Photo by Tory Anderson/Alliance for Retired Americans / Associated Press)
Gabriel Zimmerman, community outreach director for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was computer-savvy from an early age, but he also understood that technology was only the means to an end.
Zimmerman, 30, graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2002 with a degree in sociology. He was one of six people fatally wounded Saturday in Tucson, Ariz., in the shooting rampage that left his boss critically wounded.
This week, friends and colleagues remembered Zimmerman as a seasoned community organizer with a strong sense of social justice and conflict resolution.
“People have to engage,’’ said sociology professor Paul Lubeck, who vividly remembers Zimmerman’s eager presence in three of his classes. “They have to get out there on the ground, get out into the community, go out and get their hands dirty. He exemplified that.”
Read the rest of the story here.
For me, his story underscores what Jon Stewart said about those who were hurt or lost their lives that day and the amount of “anonymous goodness there is in the world…you will realize people that you don’t even know, and have never even met are leading lives of real dignity and goodness.”
That’s good to remember in times like this.