Charlottesville feels L.V.’s pain

On Oct. 2, I awoke to the news of the tragedy in your city. The magnitude of the evil that visited you, the victims, the families and friends and your residents is beyond belief. There can be no equivalent to the grief, disbelief, shock among the emotions that have blanketed such a great city. My heart is broken again and my prayers are that you will find a common effort to mourn, to bind together as a community and to recover.

My city, Charlottesville, Va., recently was the victim of an attack of terror, an incident in which the residents, beyond the anger of witnessing hundreds of heavily armed men flaunting a message of treason, felt betrayed by the institutions we trusted. And with the echo of “freedom of speech” reverberating constantly during the runup to Aug. 12, we felt powerless. We knew what was coming, but we couldn’t convince a federal judge what was coming, and members of the legal community and legal academics were unable to acknowledge the threat. When the militias left, our frustration turned inward.

Both of these tragedies have their own unique circumstances, but they do have one “after the fact” common denominator — a search for someone to blame. Someone close, someone they can get their hands on.

For now, for your community, there was one individual responsible. Please don’t let your shock and anger turn inward and tear at your city a second time.

Your city manager or executive, your sheriff and others will deal with the present, and then they will have to deal with a second more enduring attack that questions their actions before, during and after the initial attack. “Why didn’t they do this? Why did they do that? They should have done this.” This is a dark side of human nature and unavoidable in many respects. It’s as if a psychosis will envelope you, but I’m hoping that some consideration on the part of your residents (and my friends and neighbors as well) that this will happen might lessen the civic damage this will cause.

Bob Fenwick, Charlottesville, Va.