After the painful anniversary, I attended a series that educates participants about our town’s bleak history. It hurts to look at the past, but we must if we hope to ever be free
On 12 August of this year, my town of Charlottesville, Virginia, reluctantly commemorated the first anniversary of a deadly “Unite the Right” rally. We woke recalling last summer, when throngs of white nationalists raged here, spilling from Court Square past places where we had eaten birthday dinners or lay in yogic shavasana. For this dark observance, the new governor sent 1,000 riot police to blockade downtown like an apartheid of grief. We passed police checkpoints to file onto Fourth Street, to scrawl chalk hymns on the pavement near the place where Heather Heyer was killed and 19 others were battered. All year long, at home, at work, some of us have struggled to reconcile that racist display with what we find lovely about our town.
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