Today this country remembers its dead in war.  If we consider the fight against religious bigotry, xenophobia, anti-semitism, racism and white supremacy a form of war then we have to mourn our most recent local victims as soldiers as well. It is still difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that I live in a city where, this weekend, in the middle of the afternoon two men were killed and one wounded in a streetcar because they came to the aid of two young Muslima who were attacked by a White supremacist. A war veteran and father of four, a Reed College graduate and a young man who recently won a prize for a poem focussed on Islamophobia all came to the aid of strangers only to have their throats slashed.

The climate of violence is created, intensified and sanctioned from above – the link below from today’s NYT editorial shows the extent to which whole swaths of people have “left morality behind as a viable concept.”

Click on picture for Charles Blow NYT opinion piece.

Images today remind of the mourning for the loss incurred by war; the music is one of the most moving pieces I know commemorating friends who gave their lives in the belief it was for the greater good.