Gene Woods closed a sold-out luncheon with 750 of the most successful businesspeople in the Charlotte region last Tuesday by quoting his 23-year-old son, who recently moved here.
“Charlotte can be a place where America does America best,” Woods, the CEO of Advocate Health, said his son told him.
Woods has lived all over the country, and the healthcare system he runs covers six states. Point being, he knows where to rank a city’s potential. Next to him, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, no stranger to travel himself, agreed.
Last week brought in the end-of-year luncheon and banquet season to our city. I attended a handful of them, wearing out the only suit I have that still fits, and all were inspiring and helped reinforce why we love living here.
Then came Friday.
That afternoon, just before 5, a young man only one year older than Woods’ son was stabbed in the chest while riding the light rail just north of uptown. Police arrested 33-year-old Oscar Solarzano and charged him with multiple felonies, including attempted first-degree murder. DHS says he is a Honduras native who was in the country illegally. WSOC reported that before the stabbing, Solarzano was drunk and yelling at people on the train, which sadly is not an unfamiliar experience for any of us who use the light rail.
Fortunately, the victim was reported to be in stable condition.
The incident comes less than four months after Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska was murdered on the same light rail, riding in the same direction. And it comes just weeks after U.S. Customs and Border Protection galloped through town for a week in unmarked SUVs and vans.
So following a feel-good week in our city, Charlotte found itself in another weekend brushfire yesterday and today, as national politicians and commentators lit into our leaders over crime and immigration. President Trump posted on social media, “What’s going on in Charlotte?”
Inside Charlotte, people who work with immigrant communities tell me they’re worried that the incident will lead to another wave of CBP operations. At least one Charlotte-area congressperson re-upped calls to bring in the National Guard.
I could spend this space arguing the nuance of such actions. If our mayor can be blamed for anything that happens in our million-person city, can’t we also wonder why CBP was here to get the “worst of the worst” and missed someone like Solarzano, while they instead spent time threatening military veterans and questioning country club grounds crew members?
Those arguments have crossed my mind. But blame is the ditch. Character — yours, mine, our city’s — is the road.
Instead, I go back to that quote from Woods’ young son: “Charlotte can be a place where America does America best.”
And I remember that America has always been tested, to see whether we can live up to all of the phrases that we learn in elementary school, including “out of many, one.” Clearly, in a world of soaring individual influence, it’s being tested again.
And clearly, the past six months have tested Charlotte as well. We need to continue making our transportation system safer, and we ought to stop using the word “perception,” because for many, perception is the reality. But safety isn’t only about enforcement and policy. It’s also about presence. If those of us who aren’t violent stop riding, we leave the system to those who might be. We absolutely have to stop this from happening again, but we can’t simply blame people in city hall because it did.
So, on this Sunday ahead of what will surely be another difficult week for our city as people log back on and make whatever point they want to make about us, maybe we think of it like this: If Charlotte is a place where America can do America best, then this is a moment to show it, an opportunity to be “one, out of many,” and an opportunity to live up to a motto that’s a lot closer to home, the North Carolina motto, “to be rather than to seem.”
The test is here. How we answer, yet again, is up to us.