“We’re not going to have a moment of silence,” shouted one of the Boston Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence standing on the steps of Boston’s Trinity Church at tonight’s vigil for 50 people murdered and more than 50 injured when a gunman opened fire in the early hours of this morning at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. “This is not the time for silence!”
Hundreds of people standing in Copley Square cheered.
The Orlando attack is considered the deadliest mass shooting in American history.
In Boston, the attack coincided with the night following the city’s annual Pride Parade. Mourners gathered at 8 p.m. in Copley Plaza, holding candles and rainbow flags. The vigil was organized by the Sisters, radical activist drag queens who describe themselves as “queer nuns” and “sacred clowns of our community.” The ceremony followed a 6 p.m. vigil at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common. Another vigil is planned to be held at Boston City Hall Plaza at 6 tomorrow evening.
“I didn’t go to sleep last night,” Nathan Bixby of Boston, one of the organizers of the Boston Common vigil and a speaker at the Copley Square ceremony, told me before the second event. “I kept seeing news of it. I read the headlines. I read a paragraph. I couldn’t handle it. … I felt the need to heal, to show compassion to all those who were affected. I just wanted to do something because I couldn’t sit here and not do anything. I needed to do something to help my community and to help Orlando. We need a lot of healing right now.”
“We both noticed that Boston Pride wasn’t doing anything more than a moment of silence,” Jeremy Comeau of Canton, one of the organizers of the Boston Common vigil told me, “and we felt something more was appropriate.”
“We’re just going to act the fuck up,” Sister Lida Christ said before the Copley Square vigil.
“Our mourning will not be a justification for racism. Our mourning will not be a justification for more war,” Khury Petersen-Smith told the crowd. A Boston Black Lives Matter and part of the International Socialist Organization in the United States, he said the attack arose in the context of politicians policing which bathrooms transgender people are allowed to use. And, he said, it comes after Black Lives Matter protests have shed light on police violence. “The police will not make our community safer. We have to fight to make our community safer. …. We all deserve something better than this.”
(All photos here copyright 2016 Greg Cook)
