Columbia vigil honors Alton Sterling, Philando Castile

The Wilkes Boulevard United Methodist Church was packed Friday evening for a vigil to remember Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.

“This is something we can’t afford not to address anymore. It’s just too important. I feel it’s gone far beyond color,” said FayeHeidari, a Columbia resident who attended Friday’s vigil.

Organizers called the vigil a “remembrance” and “call for justice”.Sterling and Castile were both shot by police this week.

The vigil is co-sponsored by Dawson Journeys Ministries.

“We need a serious conversation about race in this country,” Rev. C.W. Dawson said. “We need less Kumbaya meetings and more meetings and conversations about the material conditions that contribute to these kinds of events as social ills.”

Other co-sponsors of the vigil include Co Mo Intersectionality, Race Matters, the Unitarian Universalist Church Committee on Race, Missouri Faith Voices and the African American Clergy Coalition of Mid-Missouri.

“The historical oppression of people of color and especially the extrajudicial killings isn’t anything new, so that’s part of what we’re doing. It’s not just an immediate response,” said Rachel Taylor, secretary of Race Matters, Friends. “We also grieve deeply for the lives of the police officers that were lost.”

Heidari said she’s now worried about her son and daughter’s safety.

“I worry about them. I have a family. The pictures we see they don’t show us positive things and it frightens us.”

Rev. Dawson said there needs to be a change in the police system, adding Friday’s event was not against police.

“We need more people who see it seriously to protect and serve,” he said. “But at the same time we also want to say to police officers and to people in the community as a whole that we have to work on this together.”

ABC 17 News asked Columbia Police if they plan to have any extra security at the event, after five Dallas Police officers were shot and killed after a protest against police shootings. Latisha Stroer, a spokesperson for the department, responded in an email saying they were not planning on anything special for Friday’s vigil.

“I hope some police officers, not as police officers, but as members of this community, and as members of the human race of american society will come who are grieving and join in as kind of a collective that we can all heal and grieve together,” Rev. Dawson said.