Last week, after the Brown shooting, I wrote an essay for the Eye that included an invitation for people to share their own thoughts.
The responses were extraordinary.
They came from all over the city: Elmhurst, Fox Point, Mount Hope, the West End.
Some offered descriptions of that awful day: from inside Avon Cinema; from a bike ride across town; from the campus of Providence College; from the other side of the world, in Australia.
Others were meditations on the nature of “community,” calls for action on gun control, words of caution against the urge to beef up local surveillance, and mournful observations about fresh anxiety, distrust, and “communal sorrow.”
I was moved by what people wrote. And I was struck by their thoughtfulness, insight, and generosity of spirit. They make me proud to call this city home. (Though, for the record, I was already quite proud.)
There are ten essays in total. They help to document a moment in our city’s history that we’d perhaps prefer to forget. But it is important that we remember.
I hope that, among their other things, these pieces can bring a bit of comfort to a city – our city – in mourning.
-Phil Eil
Readers Voices Editor, The Providence Eye
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