UCLA community holds candlelight vigil in memory of Michael Brown

As the night came near at Meyerhoff Park Thursday, about 40 people stood silently holding candles in memory of Michael Brown and those who have suffered from police brutality.

For the last two weeks, protesters in Ferguson have called for an end to what they believe to be police brutality after Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo. on Aug. 9. Brown’s death and several other high-profile police shootings in recent weeks have brought the topics of police brutality and racial profiling to the national forefront.

This has also prompted members of the UCLA community to protest incidents of perceived police brutality and racial profiling. The Incarcerated Youth Tutorial Project, a student group at UCLA that tutors middle and high school students at a probation camp in Malibu, organized the candlelight vigil.

Speakers at the event voiced their frustration with how often they believe incidents of police brutality have disproportionately affected people of color.

Several protests against perceived incidents of police brutality have also occurred across Los Angeles this week.

On Sunday, protesters in downtown Los Angeles voiced their outrage at the fatal shooting of Ezell Ford, an unarmed 25-year-old black man, by a Los Angeles Police Department officer in South Los Angeles on Aug. 11.

Jason Gosschalk, a third-year biochemistry student and a project director for the Incarcerated Youth Tutorial Project, said the goal of the vigil was to begin a healing process.

“Sometimes people need to feel their despair to heal,” Gosschalk said.

Michael Oshiro, a UCLA doctoral student in education and one of the organizers of the event, lamented that the vigil took place just a year after UCLA members held a vigil for black teenager Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in February 2012, after Zimmerman was acquitted.

“We find ourselves again, just as angry, just as frustrated,” Oshiro said.

Throughout Thursday’s vigil, several people walking up Bruin Walk stopped and glanced at the scene, then joined in the silence.

After a moment of silence, event organizers invited attendees to speak about their experiences with the police.

One UCLA employee talked about how he thinks a police officer racially profiled him and his friends and pointed a gun at him last year as they walked in Culver City.

“(Police officers) made assumptions about who I was,” said Layhearn Tep, a UCLA graduate and assistant to the director of UCLA’s Community Programs Office who is Cambodian.

The vigil’s organizers also read the names of some individuals who have been fatally shot by police over the past few years in the U.S.

UCLA Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Janina Montero, also holding a candle, stood with students in the vigil. She said she wanted to be there to provide care and comfort for students and other members of the community dealing with a “deeply painful” subject.

“A single one is one too many,” Montero said, talking about the students’ shared experiences.