Hurting With Waukesha
That dark Sunday night, after a few hours focusing on the feelings about what happened at the Waukesha Christmas parade, it was time to do some work – to start thinking like a journalist.
At square one, we found a problem that spoke to the unprecedented horror that had been inflicted on our greater Milwaukee community: We weren’t even sure what to call this. Incident was a cop-speak nonstarter – too clinical. Attack drew some conclusions about the driver’s motive that weren’t clear then. The word that news reports, including our digital stories, coalesced around was tragedy, and while 22 years in journalism had imparted in me reservations about such loaded words, it just fit.
The driver of that SUV took six lives – and upended many more. Many of the victims will need to overcome severe injury and the trauma of witnessing something so awful. But even those who were not along that parade route must reckon with the reality that such a thing could happen not just here, but in a time and place intended for celebration and community.
A journalist’s role after a tragedy like this is to detail the grief and the outpourings of support, to mourn the dead, to identify those responsible and ensure they’re held accountable. That’s all being reported as I write this, but there’s one account of the parade tragedy I worry will never be told: why it happened. If we come to find out that the driver had hate in his heart, or was mentally ill, does that make this act of violence any less senseless? In a profession that aims to explain, how can you help anyone really understand this?
Perhaps the developments of the coming weeks and months will offer a magazine like ours a chance to explain, dissect or contextualize. Until then, I want to say something that I regret the nature of a monthly publication did not allow sooner: Waukesha, we stand with you, and we hurt with you.
Peace and love,
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Carole Nicksin’s editor’s letter will return in the February issue.