OPINION: We can’t avoid Charlottesville, Virginia

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

I wasn’t checking Twitter over the weekend. After a few

days of North Korea breathing down our collective necks, I left for Wisconsin with a friend and avoided seeing the national news for the most part.

By my return on Sunday, a woman and two police officers were dead in Virginia, and many more were permanently wounded — physically perhaps, but deeply, emotionally traumatized.

There are no words to express how I felt watching footage of white supremacists cut a trail through Charlottesville. I watched a car ram through a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd in broad daylight. Then I heard the screaming — a slicing, human screaming — and saw a woman collapse, unable to process what she bore witness to.

This is our country.

These are the scenes that reporter Elle Reeve and her VICE News Tonight team brought to my screen, and I tell you, I understand why every black individual or parent in the country would feel fear.

Reeve and her team deftly navigated on-the-fly interviews with leading white supremacists. They unflinchingly hopped into a van, surrounded by men who already promised to deliver violence to the other side. They continued asking questions, and we heard how far these men are willing to go.

We also saw the cost. Medics, Black Lives Matter activists and others processed their shock in front of our eyes. Reeve herself, who had reported calmly and exactingly beforehand, tried to collect herself on camera after seeing the car speed off in reverse, leaving the damage behind.

This mob terrorism, this man-made disaster, is just different enough from the many reports we’ve grown used to over the years. When Dylann Roof murdered unarmed church members — when Timothy McVeigh planted bombs in an Oklahoma City office building — when a bomb exploded during morning prayers at the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, two weeks ago — at least, at the very, miserably minuscule least, we could say individuals or rogue, small groups on the fringe of society were responsible for the violence.

We no longer have whatever comfort that was able to give us when college students and community members were taunted and beaten this weekend, driven under a car’s wheels.

Consider this: After nearly every violent attack committed by a Muslim or a black man, we urge those community leaders to police their own people. “Report extremist behavior,” we say, “It’s your community’s responsibility.”

Well now. Who’s responsibility is it to intercept the white supremacists?

One tiny church in Glenwood, Iowa, got the idea this week. “White supremacy is sin. Say it,” says the front church sign greeting congregants and visitors.

It’s a start for us, at least.