Afghans arrived near a small Virginia town, exposing two different versions of America https://t.co/BgVtxoNzrS
â The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 25, 2021
The Washington Post once again demonstrating why local reporting is important:
BLACKSTONE, Va. â Mayor Billy Coleburn finished his burger, pulled out his cellphone and braced himself for the two dozen Facebook notifications and slew of unread messages waiting for him. âLetâs see how bad they are,â he said, sitting in a booth at the Brew House on Main Street, in the town of roughly 3,600 people in rural southside Virginia.
The rumors seemed to be evolving each day, ever since an international humanitarian crisis made its way across the world and then landed in Blackstoneâs backyard. Just over a mile from the town limits, past a thick tree line and behind the heavily guarded gates of Fort Pickett, there were now more Afghan evacuees than Blackstone residents.
Roughly 5,900 men, women and children who had escaped the chaos and the Taliban in Kabul were now sleeping on cots in barracks and tractor trailers at the Virginia National Guard installation, one of three military bases in Virginia where Afghans are being temporarily housed before getting resettled in communities across the United States.
The makeshift village was largely invisible to anyone beyond the gates of the military base, as were the Afghans within it. They were nowhere to be seen in the town of Blackstone, but somehow seemed to be everywhere too, as their recent arrival transfixed the community.
Coleburn watched as his town seemed to crack into two different Americas: one, welcoming the evacuees with floods of donations and compassion, and the other, apprehensive and suspicious, believing the mere presence of the foreigners posed a threat to the townâs safety. A recent arrest of one Afghan evacuee at Fort Pickett on charges of grand larceny, after he was accused of stealing a car on base, had only inflamed their suspicions…
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