Bay Area residents seeking to communally grieve and process the recent spate of mass shootings across California — including those in Half Moon Bay, Monterey Park and Oakland — gathered at a vigil in Oakland’s Chinatown on Wednesday evening to honor the many lives lost to senseless gun violence.
"As a community, we come together to make sure that we are creating the language in order to tell the story about what's most important and what's most meaningful," Michelle Mush Lee, executive director of Youth Speaks, said to the crowd of several hundred people gathered at Wilma Chan Park. "Not just in the lives of those who were killed, but what does this mean for those of us who are still here?"
"We also realize that there's intercommunal violence and that there's been a long-brewing story of domestic violence and gender-based violence in our communities that many of us don't talk about," she added. "There's also a long history of inherited trauma from colonialism and just being a part of any diaspora that's forced to leave their homeland. And so we carry that."
"I think spirituality and faith at a time like this is really important because we know that people are suffering and they're grieving and they're despairing," said Rev. Deborah Lee, executive director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, based in Oakland. "Reconnecting with our faith and spirituality reminds us that we're together. We share values and believe we can achieve a different reality than what we currently have and that we can work together for peace, love and for a world where it's not easier to buy a gun than [it is] to get support when you actually need support."
"It just felt like a time where it was really important to show up in person and be with the community when we're struggling with so many things," said Christine Miyashiro, policy director for Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan.
The vigil, organized by a host of local AAPI groups, follows a seemingly unbelievable trail of gun-inflicted carnage across a state with some of the nation's strictest firearms regulations.
"Oakland has done a lot of things around trying to stop the proliferation of ghost guns here," Miyashiro added. "But we're only as strong as whatever is the weakest thing that surrounds us. And so this is a national problem."
Last Saturday, a gunman shot and killed 11 people and injured nine others at a dance studio in Monterey Park, a predominantly Asian community near Los Angeles. The suspect killed himself shortly thereafter. The motive for the attack remains unclear.
Less than 48 hours later, seven farmworkers were killed and one was critically injured when a gunmen opened fire at two different mushroom farms in Half Moon Bay. The suspect is an employee of one of the farms and had previously worked at the other.
Just the following day, a teenager was killed and multiple other people wounded in a shootout at an Oakland gas station. Witnesses said the gunfire erupted during the filming of a music video.
And the previous week, a 16-year-old mother and her 6-month-old baby were among six people killed in a shooting at a home in the Central Valley town of Goshen, in what authorities believe was a targeted attack.
Altogether, 25 people were killed in those four mass shootings across the state within the last two weeks.
A vigil for victims of the Monterey Park shooting will also be held on Thursday at Portsmouth Square in San Francisco’s Chinatown from 5:30–7:00 p.m.
This story includes reporting from KQED's Spencer Whitney.