Today is the anniversary of the Nickel Mines Amish school shooting. Some of our readers know that this event shoot me pretty terribly, for a variety of reasons: this is very close to the church of my youth, my grandparents work as Amish school taxi drivers (ferrying school teachers to their schools), and I had a long friendship with the killer’s wife, from kindergarten on. At the time of the shooting, I was conducting research on Westboro Baptist Church, and their response to it halted my work for several months. I was eventually able to resume, a process that I have written about elsewhere.
In honor of the anniversary, I am sharing this blog post by Luke Brunning and Per-Erik Milam, which you can find at the International Network for Hate Studies blog. “Forgiving Hate Crimes: The Case of Dylan Roof” considers the place of forgiveness in such atrocious crimes.
Rebecca
