A large crowd packed a Reston, Virginia, church on Thursday night, singing and holding candles to honor those who have been injured or killed during interactions with federal law enforcement officials.
Led by community and religious leaders, the crowd applauded as speakers urged them to speak out. Pictures of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were both killed in Minneapolis, sat in the front of the room at United Christian Parish.
The gathering came days after Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at Minneapolis VA Medical Center, was shot several times while filming Border Patrol officers conducting an immigration enforcement operation.
Good was killed earlier in January while blocking a road with her vehicle.
Their deaths have led to large-scale demonstrations in Minneapolis and other parts of the country.
Virginia Rep. James Walkinshaw, who organized the vigil, said the event wasn’t about politics but instead “human beings coming together to acknowledge that lives are being lost needlessly and that the violence needs to come to an end.”
“It’s so wrong,” said Howard Berman, who attended the vigil. “What’s happening there, happening in Portland, Maine, and happened in California, and will be happening elsewhere.”
Pastor Vernon Walter, meanwhile, told the crowd he’s “tired, my brothers and sisters, this evening of funerals that should never have happened. I am tired tonight of mothers crying out to a system that does not answer them back. I am tired of power that takes life first and explains itself later.”
Mary Jackson said she’s been writing on social media “how proud we are of the Minnesotans.”
“I hope the message sends to those who have some authority in the White House to know that they’re doing the American citizens wrong, and they are actually persecuting people who have lived here for years and strive to make this country the country that it is today,” Jackson said.
Rev. Linda Calkins suspected “probably everybody in this room knows someone who is afraid to come out and is afraid of being arrested or taken away from their family.”
Walkinshaw is calling for an independent investigation into what led to Good and Pretti’s deaths, “not conducted by the Department of Homeland Security itself. It should be conducted by an impartial, independent FBI. Unfortunately, we don’t have that. So those investigations need to be conducted by state and local agencies.”