PITTSBURGH (AP) — Last week in Parkland, Florida, wrecking equipment began demolishing the building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where a gunman’s rampage in 2018 ended with 17 people dead. As the rumble of destruction echoed, people in the community set to explaining exactly why ripping the building down was so meaningful — and so crucial. From former student Bryan Lequerique: “It’s something that we all need.
It’s time to bring an end to this very hurtful chapter in everyone’s lives.” And Eric Garner, a broadcasting and film teacher, said: “For 61⁄2 years we have been looking at this monument to mass murder that has been on campus every day. .
.. So coming down, that’s the monumental event.
” Parkland. Uvalde. Columbine.
Sandy Hook. A supermarket in Buffalo. A church in South Carolina.
A synagogue in Pittsburgh. A nightclub in Orlando, Florida. When violence comes to a public place, as it does all too often in our era, a delicate question lingers in the quiet afterward: What should be done with the buildings where blood was shed, where lives were upended, where loved ones were lost forever? Which is the appropriate choice — the defiance of keeping them standing, or the deep comfort that can come with wiping them off the map? Is it best to keep pain right in front of us, or at a distance? This question has been answered differently over the years.
The most obvious example in recent history is the decision to preserve the concentration camps .
