Los Angeles. Photo by waltarrrrr on Flickr.

The day before Thanksgiving, Loudoun County elementary school principal Kathleen Hwang died. She was trying to cross a road in her Sterling neighborhood.

How should we react to such a tragedy? Certainly we should mourn the loss of a beloved member of the community. But can we also learn from this experience as part of an effort to stop it from happening again? …

Where does the blame rest? The sad fact is that we — our society as a whole — created this problem. That’s because we relentlessly build communities that aren’t safe to walk in.

Read more in my latest op-ed in the Washington Post.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.