In Brooklyn, Iowa, a diverse community of people who got along just wanted to quietly mourn. But then the venomous ooze of today’s politics began to seep in. And things changed. “Soon, residents were retreating from their usual routines, avoiding the park, the grocery store, their own front yards, because the hatred being spewed out there had begun seeping in here, too. The wave of racist rhetoric prompted organizers to cancel two nearby Latino heritage festivals. At the high school, the principal used his annual welcome-back assembly to tell his students that prejudice had no place in their halls, even as one Latina student listening in the crowd would soon hear classmates whispering that people like her should go back to the border.” WaPo: After arrest of undocumented immigrant in Mollie Tibbetts case, Iowa town tries to escape the inescapable: politics.