Crime Victims' Candlelight Vigil

I attended the 23rd Annual Crime Victims' Candlelight Vigil, Remembrance and Renewal, a few days ago and have had it on my mind ever since.

It was a powerful combination of performance, prayer, testimony, confession, heartbreak, joy. Sponsored by the Office of the State Attorney General and the Downtown Coalition for Crime Victims, the keynote speaker was Andy Ostroy, the husband of actress/filmaker Adrienne Shelley whose murder in her Greenwich Village office was initially mistaken as a suicide. He emphasized using the power of the press, having forced the city to pursue her death as a murder through the media. And, of course, the killer was caught, tried, and recently convicted. Ostroy was terse and moving. But he was a prime example of the progressive identity of those who experience personal crime. First you are a victim, then you are a survivor, then you are a thriver.

On the performance side, Donovan Christian Singletary of the Metropolitan Opera's Young Artists Program sang "Ol' Man River" and the Frank Sinatra School singers did a sweet "Here Comes The Sun" and a really affecting "In My Life". The NiteStar Program from St. Lukes did a movement and voice piece that was hard to hear but packed a punch anyway.

Many of the personal testimonies were deeply disturbing and I've had trouble shaking them through the week. I guess, having just been through physical violence in my own life, a lot of it resonated on a personalized level. You know, the guy three weeks ago could have had a knife or a gun. I am very fortunate. I've also, since the vigil, been reflecting on a much worse episode of violence in my life. It happened in April of 1982 and still lingers in the shadows of my mind, occasionally showing its ugly face in the light. It was a horror and I will blog about it another time. Perhaps.

Anyway, I'm so glad I went and, if it has made me feel things, I have never been a person who resented feeling.