Tuesday, March 23, 2021, marked the one week memorial of the 8 people, 6 of whom were Asian women, by a white man in Atlanta Georgia. It’s been a heavy time for us and our community. It’s been hard to be ok, show up, and continue to push through. So we paused. Took a collective deep breath and came back to what grounds us – community, culture, and ceremony. We moved, screamed, cried, sent prayers – together.
And it couldn’t have happened without the fiery and honest grounding by liz suk, Interim Executive Director of Oakland Rising, a multiracial collaborative made up of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (who Co-planned the event and held down the logistics), East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Ella Baker Center, Causa Justa: Just Cause, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, and Parent Voices Oakland, and the creativity of Bay Rising and Good Good Eatz to allow us to express our prayers to those taken and flower making to honor women lost to violences of all forms. Tuesday’s Vigil couldn’t have been as powerful in moving us without the leadership of Dohee Lee of Puri Project, the life force of Ieumsae – Queer and Trans Korean Folk Drumming and words of Michelle Mush Lee of Whole Story Group that spoke to our rage and sorrow. Thank you to Healing Clinic Collective and local acupuncture/herbalist students for providing bodywork. OCA Asian Pacific American Advocates – East Bay and Asian Health Services allowed our program sound to be amplified throughout Madison Park while our accomplices at Anti Police-Terror Project and Community Ready Corps grieved and held space with us. Thank you to Korean Community Center of the East Bay, AYPAL: Building API Community Power, Asians with Attitude, Protect Oakland Chinatown, AAPI Women Lead, REAL People’s Fund, Jewish Youth for Justice, and the Oakland Chinatown Coalition for joining and supporting.
The prayers collected on cards at the vigil will become a traveling art display and will be digitized and sent to Atlanta along with these videos.
We will have the world we want, because we’re ALL in this together — regenerating safety and dignity for all of us through healing, for the love of our people. We hope you found healing and a renewed energy for solidarity and to fight for our collective liberation from violence of racism and misogyny.
Sending love & sharing hope.
#FromTheBay2GA #FromOAK2ATL #LoveOurPeople #StopAsianHate #ReimagineSafety
Donate to Families of those Murdered in Atlanta https://bit.ly/DonateToGeorgiaAAPICommunity
Thank You Jordan Foster for capturing these precious moments.
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Thanks to all the sponsors: Oakland Rising, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates—East Bay, Whole Story Group, Korean Community Center of the East Bay, Dohee Lee of Puri Project, GoodGoodEatz, Ieumsae -Korean Folk Drumming, Bay Rising, Healing Clinic Collective, Anti-Police Terror Project, Community Ready Corps, Asian Health Services, AYPAL: Building API Community Power, Oakland Chinatown Coalition, Oakland Rising Collaborative Org: East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Ella Baker Center, Causa Justa: Just Cause, CURYJ, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Parent Voices Oakland