'El Paso Will Never Heal': Three Months Later, the Border Town Still Reels

[TexasTowelie]

Faded American, Mexican, Texas, and German flags ripple in the wind and a single wind chime softly clinks at a makeshift memorial at the Walmart in El Paso where a white supremacist killed 22 people and injured two dozen more on August 3. Prayer candles, bouquets, photographs, and handwritten messages stretch for hundreds of feet behind the fenced-in store, which will forever be known as the site of one of the country’s worst mass shootings and most heinous acts of racist domestic terrorism.

Today, the 6-foot-high covered fence makes it difficult to see the parking lot and front of the store. But catch a glimpse, and you’ll spot the cars of construction workers, who have raced to strip the store’s inside down to its studs and complete a dramatic remodel that will include a permanent memorial for the victims.

The store is tentatively scheduled to reopen in just two weeks, on November 6. “Nothing will erase the pain of August 3 and we are hopeful that reopening the store will be another testament to the strength and resiliency that has characterized the El Paso community in the wake of this tragedy,” a Walmart spokesperson told the New York Times in late August.

Many see the store’s reopening as part of a necessary return of quotidien routines in the city, marking the community’s resolve not to let the shooter disrupt their way of life. Indeed, when traversing the predominantly Hispanic border town, it’s hard to avoid the phrase “El Paso Strong.” Plastered on fast-food restaurant marquees, graffitied wall murals, tattoos, T-shirts, and bumper stickers, it’s come to define the community’s defiant response to the racial violence that attacked the city’s binational identity and its embrace of immigrants and refugees. (The gunman published a manifesto online before the massacre, detailing his intent to murder Latinos “in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”)

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/el-paso-gun-forum-walmart/

[agingdem]

1. everything changed

No such thing as "the new normal" after a mass shooting..the initial shock has been replaced with anger...security guards everywhere...no one lingers...get in and get out as quickly as possible...because we have always been a predominately hispanic city the influx of immigrants is a way of life...we are neighbors and friends..our children and grandchildren are bi-cultural and bilingual...but because of Trump's white nationalist hatred my children and grandchildren will forever have a target on their backs..."new normal"?..no..."new different"?..yes