Dozens of people gathered at Bend’s Pioneer Park Thursday for a vigil honoring the Asian-American women killed this week in Atlanta.
The group held a moment of silence as they placed flowers of remembrance in the Deschutes River.
Speakers shared their feelings surrounding the shootings in Atlanta and voiced pleas for solidarity among all.
Asian-American community members here put on the event, which was also coordinated by the group “Allyship in Action.”
Asian Americans were already worn down by a year of pandemic-fueled racist attacks when a white gunman was charged with killing eight people, most of them Asian women, at three Atlanta-area massage parlors.
Authorities say 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long told police the attack was not racially motivated.
He claimed that he targeted the spas because of a “sex addiction.”
Six of the seven slain women were identified as Asian.
