When the Virginia Quarterly Review asked me to write some reflections on the events of August 11th and 12th, 2017, and their aftermath, I was glad to say "yes." On that Friday and Saturday, hundreds of white supremacists, many of them well armed, invaded Charlottesville, Virginia, intent on spreading terror. They did so. Before they left, they had desecrated the grounds of the University of Virginia, murdered Heather Heyer, an anti-racist activist, and sent scores of injured people to the hospital. Charlottesville, my hometown, had become #Charlottesville, a social media hashtag and a metonym for racism, violence, and death.
The candlelight procession through the grounds of Uuniversity of
Virginia on August 16th was a secular exorcism, with
the good spirits of UVA students and faculty members, as well as
and people from the Charlottesville community, driving out
the bad spirits that white supremacists left behind.
Photo by Matt Eich.
Writing the essay, "#Charlottesville," was a way of coming to terms with the events of the 11th and 12th and with the transformation of this town into an internationally recognized hashtag. In it, I explain that we, the university community and the people of Charlottesville, were terrorized, but that we're undefeated. We're resilient and we're recovering. But we also know that we have a lot of work to do to put our house in order. You can read my thoughts, here.
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Several days ago, I blogged about the immediate aftermath of the attacks. It's a piece that both personal and public. The Stansbury Forum has republished it, here.
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