Editorial: There's room for hope in a week of terrible moment

This is a week of terrible - but perhaps also fertile - moment.

Yesterday, memorials took place in Dallas and towns across the country - including Aurora and Elgin - for five Dallas police officers killed by a rage-filled assassin out to write a political statement in blood.

Today, family and friends of Naperville's Sandra Bland will come together in Chicago to remember her a year after she died in police custody - in Texas, ironically - following a routine traffic stop that got out of hand.

Tomorrow, a funeral service will be held for Philando Castile, a black man killed by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, during a traffic stop. Friday, funeral services will be held for Alton Sterling, a black man killed by police trying to arrest him in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

All this needless death. All jumbled together as though disparate events share a common theme. Yet, all marked by significant differences.

However real the injustices - and the video evidence suggests they are shocking indeed - of the Castile and Sterling killings, they occurred in adrenaline-fueled moments of crisis and snap judgment. The police deaths in Dallas were the result of a calculated act of outright mass murder. Bland's death, even if it was suicide as officials ruled and others dispute, came days after her arrest while she was being held in a Texas jail.

All singular events, linked less by the intentions of the people involved than by the similarly tragic outcomes that define them.

The memorials and protests have their differences as well. Black Lives Matter. Blue Lives Matter. All Lives Matter. Moments of silent reflection. Angry outbursts and disruptions in the streets. In the minds of the participants, the solutions seem so simple. They are anything but. Fewer guns. More guns. Demand more of the police. We ask too much of the police. It goes on.

We are drawn to the words of Crista Noel, an activist helping organize today's #SandyStillSpeaks memorial in Chicago. She told our Katlyn Smith, "Let's be one with it right now, not one against it, and understand that this is something bigger than us."

"This," she went on, "is a moment for great change and the way we move forward with it is so important, and there should be moments where it's not about marching down the street and screaming out."

This is a week unavoidably, importantly, devoted to memories, losses and divisions. But it still can be a week that is about hopes, advances and unity. Yes, this is a week of terrible moment, but its outcome can be something better.