Swastikas In Reston

It's a tough time right now. Over 90,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and millions of people have lost their jobs. Even with much of the country starting to open up, many people continue to stay at home and limit their time going out. I tend to try to keep things light here on Sean's Ramblings and have tried to share stories or observations to make people smile. (I think getting an LOL might be a little much.)

Today's post is a little more on the serious side. On Wednesday morning, spray-painted swastikas were found at the North Point Shopping Center in Reston.

Here's the story from Patch.

Vandals spray-painted swastikas and profanity on the sidewalks and walls of businesses in North Point Shopping Center early Wednesday morning.

Fairfax County Police responded at 6:05 a.m., for the report of a graffiti in the 1400 block of North Point Village Center, according to the daily crime report. Officers found swastikas had been spray-painted on the sidewalk and nearby areas of the North Point Shopping Center. The case remains under investigation.

This really hits close to home since I used to live walking distance from this shopping center, and have been there hundreds of times. We actually drove through the shopping center just last weekend so that the kids could see something other than our street. Of course, the shootings at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue hit close to home since that's the synagogue I attended growing up, and I know people who lost loved ones. And the vandalism that occurred at the Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center in 2017 and 2018 hit close to home since I live in Northern Virginia. And the shooting at a Poway synagogue last year hit close to home since I used to live in San Diego and know someone who knows the rabbi who was injured.

Seeing a trend here? According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), there were more anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in 2019 in at least 40 years. Let's hear from Homer Simpson.



These incidents aren't the fault of one specific individual in the executive office, but blaming people on both sides after the neo-nazi rally in Charlottesville and mentioning Henry Ford's blood lines during a tour of a Ford plant in Michigan on Thursday doesn't help. At a minimum it empowers racists and anti-Semites and gives them the feeling that they have a friend or at least someone who supports their views in the White House.

You know, maybe I'm reading too much into this. Maybe I'm just worried about what's happening in the world right now and am thinking about bigger picture stuff a little more. I'm just tired of seeing stuff like this happen. And this doesn't even include the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and the fact that armed protesters can enter and occupy Michigan's capital building with no repercussions whatsoever.

I'm going to end this on a positive. Maybe the spray-paintings in Reston was just a way to promote the show "Lucifer" which is now on Netflix after several seasons on Fox. Yes, let's go with this. Just a harmless prank to promote a TV show. Now I feel much better!

Photos by Harriet Dunlap and Seth Herald/Reuters.

Update: I want to give credit to Reston Now for continuing to follow this story. There's a bit of a happy ending in Reston thanks to some fantastic work by Chalk Hooligans.