July 15, 2016
Philadelphia journalist Derek Harper spent Thursday evening celebrating Bastille Day in France, his wife’s homeland, trying to make sense of an apparent terror attack.
Harper, who is staying near Lyon with his wife and small children, only learned of the attack that killed more than 80 people and injured hundreds more in Nice – about 180 miles away – once he and his relatives arrived home from the evening celebration. For many French, the violence dredged up the horrors of the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 and January 2015.
On Friday, the Fairmount resident agreed to put his thoughts about the attack into words for PhillyVoice, just hours after the tragedy:
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The Bastille Day holiday is a national party, similar in spirit to the Fourth of July, and smaller towns have fireworks the days before.
Like practically everything else, the main event is in Paris and is carried live on television. TV news stories yesterday were full of the preparations, which included terrorism precautions.
For France, the holiday commemorates the time that a small group of people, convinced that the king had stashed away political prisoners and dissenters, raided the ancient building.
It was torn down shortly afterwards, and the pieces carted off as souvenirs. It's a powerful symbol of the country's history.
We were about three-fifths of a mile away [from the festivities in and around Lyon], standing on a steep parkway, and were packed shoulder to shoulder. It was a party, with some of the street cafe restaurants that were open playing music and people dancing.
The crowd was a mix of the increasingly polyglot country.
While it was a party, the events from earlier attacks weren't far from my mind.
As we left, some knucklehead started tossing firecrackers into the crowd. The first few that landed made me instinctively twitch and wonder if this was some kind of attack.
One landed about 10 feet away, in front of a woman swathed in a headscarf and her daughter.
We all jumped and looked for the culprit.
It was only after I got home and went online and saw the news did I know what had happened in Nice.
It was bizarre and confusing. The promenade des Anglais in Nice is like the boardwalk at the beach - a fun place that people meet up for celebrations.
Who would drive a box truck onto the boardwalk in the middle of the Fourth of July celebration?
Why go after a crowd like this?
They were out celebrating the time when the public went out and destroyed a hated symbol of a system that favored the elites and the ones born to power, in favor of a system that proposes the possibility of freedom and equality for everyone.
To drive a truck over a crowd like this is to side with the forces that would try to take humanity back to an earlier time of domination by kings, religious bureaucracy and armed might.
While it has dominated television and internet coverage, there are still few answers with people wondering exactly why this person did this.
I guess we will have to wait.
