On the eve of June 4th at 7 PM, the Malden Community Organizing for Racial Equity held a virtual vigil to consider black lives taken by police and to condemn police brutality. The vigil was streamed on Youtube and on Facebook, with a total of over 2,400 views.

The program, co-convened by MaldenCORE leaders Erga Pierette and Isadel Eddy, included the following roster of speakers:

Pastor Edsel Cadet (Cambridge Seventh-day Adventist Church)
Brother Melvin Sutton Jr. (Malden Islamic Center)
Rabbi Jessica Lowenthal (Temple Beth Shalom Melrose)
Reverend Otto O’Connor (First Parish in Malden Unitarian Universalist Church)
Christelle Jean (Malden High School Sophomore)
Andrea So & Trisha Obsequio (Greater Malden Asian American Community Coalition, GMAACC)
Zane Crute (Mystic Valley Area NAACP),
Congresswoman Katherine Clark
Gary Christenson (Malden Mayor)

The program closed as Pastor Emily Hamilton (First Lutheran Church, Malden, MA) extinguished 100 candles representing black and brown people who were killed by police as their names were read by Councillor Neal Anderson and members of MaldenCORE, GMAACC, and Mystic Valley Chapter of the NAACP.

Featured Image: Art by Greater Malden Asian American Community Coalition member Shaina Lu! According to Lu, the middle figure in the image is inspired by a photograph of a demonstrator in Ferguson in 2014 right after Michael Brown’s murder (original photo: Joe Raedle).