As the people who work for the Capital Gazette mourn their five co-workers gunned down in a senseless murder spree by a deranged psychotic, today they expressed, on their Editorial page, their heartfelt thanks for the warm outpouring of support the paper received from its readership, the community it serves, and those decent and good people in this nation who called or wrote to express their condolences and sympathies:
We will never forget Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, John McNamara or Rebecca Smith, our five co-workers who were gunned down in a senseless attack.
But we also will always remember the bells of St. Anne’s ringing as members of our staff — past and present — walked down Main Street surrounded by thousands who turned out to support us in a march to City Dock.
We always will remember the singing on a grassy knoll across from our office in a second vigil, little more than a day after five acts of murderous rage changed our lives forever.
But for Donald Trump and his online army of hatemongering, cowardly supporters who bombarded the Gazette with threatening messages of hate after one of its reporters frankly opined that Trump’s phony “thoughts and prayers” were worthless when he’d spent the hours just before these murders gleefully smearing journalists as “enemies of the people,” the paper also had something more to say, before the memory of their friends’ deaths faded into the next news cycle, sure to be dominated by more Tweets from the soulless abomination occupying the Oval Office:
Here’s what else we won’t forget: Death threats and emails from people we don’t know celebrating our loss, or the people who called for one of our reporters to get fired because she got angry and cursed on national television after witnessing her friends getting shot.
We won’t forget being called an enemy of the people.
No, we won’t forget that. Because exposing evil, shining light on wrongs and fighting injustice is what we do.
The Capital Gazette won’t back down, or back away in the face of the hatred this President inspires and encourages.
And neither will we.
