Candlelight vigil at SLO park honors people of color killed by police
More than 200 people gathered at Mitchell Park in downtown San Luis Obispo on Thursday night for a candlelight vigil to honor the lives of people of color and LGBTQ people lost to police violence.
Solemn protesters sat quietly in the grass for more than 20 minutes after the peaceful demonstration officially began. The event was led by local Black leadership from Cal Poly and Cuesta College and featured an opening ceremony by indigenous community youth.
As the sun set behind the silhouette of a nearby church, Grace Central Coast, a San Luis Obispo Police Department drone could be heard whirring over the hushed crowd.
Bicycle-riding police officers kept an eye on the event from afar, they told The Tribune, in order not to have a visible presence at the memorial.
On Thursday, Tianna Arata, one of the organizers of the event, recounted the killing of Elijah McClain, a young Black man who died in police custody in Aurora, Colorado, in 2019.
“He was a nerd. He wasn’t a threat,” Arata told the crowd. “He was just a young guy trying to live his life.”
Speaker Darius Jackson presided over a powerful few moments when he read the words of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis in May after a police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 49 seconds. That officer, who has since been fired, faces a second-degree murder charge.
“Please, officer, I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Please,” Jackson read to a silent crowd lit mostly by candlelight.
“A lot of my white friends don’t know what it’s like to be African American in America,” Jackson told the crowd. “And I don’t blame them — they weren’t taught the truth in school.”
The vigil was the first candlelight memorial in a series of mostly peaceful protests and marches over the past three weeks in San Luis Obispo.
Just one local protest saw violence.
On June 1, San Luis Obispo police used tear gas and pepper bullets to disperse demonstrators after they allegedly didn’t comply with commands from law enforcement agencies to leave a section of Santa Rosa Street.
