Campus & community, Campus news

Campus groups to hold vigil remembering Atlanta spa shooting, anti-Asian violence

By Ivan Natividad

A photo of a crowd of people holding candles at twilight
At a candlelight vigil held Sunday in Pittsburgh, attendees honored the victims of last week’s Atlanta shootings where eight people, including six Asian women, were killed. “Anti-Asian scapegoating has become an American tradition,” says Berkeley Public Health Dean Michael Lu, in a message urging the campus to support the Asian American and Pacific Islander community during the national upsurge in anti-Asian violence. (AP photo by Alexandra Wimley)
A photo of a crowd of people holding candles at twilight

A year ago, vigils were held around the country for the victims of a mass shooting in the Atlanta area: Eight people, including six Asian women, were killed. On Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of the tragedy, Berkeley campus groups will meet at the Sproul Plaza fountain to remember the shooting and create a space for healing and discourse. (AP photo by Alexandra Wimley)

On March 16, 2021, a mass shooter entered a string of Atlanta-area spa and massage parlors leaving eight people dead , including six people of Asian descent. A year later, the victims — Daoyou Feng, 44; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Soon C. Park, 74; Xiaojie Tan, 49; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; and Yong A. Yue, 63 — will be remembered this Wednesday during a campus community vigil held by the Sproul Plaza fountain at 5 p.m.

Sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Student Development Office , Path to Care Center and the Student Learning Center, the event, “ Cultivating Healing for our Collective Futures: Community Vigil and Healing Space,” will allow people to “mourn, process and heal together amidst ongoing waves of gendered anti-Asian violence, both systemic and interpersonal.”

The vigil will also be dedicated to building community through art and discourse. Asian Pacific American Student Development Assistant Director Miya Sommers said in the year since the horrific violence of the Atlanta shootings, there have been numerous high profile murders of Asian American women: “only making more terrifying the ongoing racist and gendered violence we experience in our daily lives.

“During this vigil, we intend to make space for the immense need to grieve and honor the many victims of this violence while also tapping into our collective wisdom and power to generate avenues for healing that allow us to envision and create worlds where we are all safe and free.”

For more information on this event go here.