Oakland Vigil for the Syrian People

Gather with family, friends, neighbors, and fellow community members for a candlelight vigil for the Syrian people. Please bring candles from home if possible as we will have limited supply.

This vigil is organized by local community members who wish to pay respect to the Syrian people. If there are other vigils or protests planned regarding Syria, please share below.

If you can't make it to the vigil, please consider donating to SAMS, IRUSA, or other organizations that provide emergency relief in/around Syria. (https://www.sams-usa.net/)

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Excerpt from 4/4/17 New York Times article entitled "Survivors of Syria Gas Attack Recount ‘a Cruel Scene’":

"On Monday, Mr. Trump’s administration signaled that it no longer saw the departure of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria as a priority. On Tuesday, Mr. Assad appeared to unleash one of the worst chemical attacks of the war.

“If Donald Trump is happy for this to happen to his own people and his own children,” said Mr. Youssef, “then we’re happy to keep Bashar al-Assad.”

Shuffling around in the hospital parking lot, several of Mr. Youssef’s relatives buried themselves in their phones, watching the videos of the morning’s atrocities over and over.

The clips have been widely circulated on the internet. They show the pale corpses of dead toddlers, or the retching bodies of men who appear to be close to death.

One gray-haired woman lay on her back, her purple leggings exposed. A young boy, perhaps 12, lay motionless except for his mouth, gasping for air. None had visible marks of injury. Some of the sickened and dying were nearly naked, as rescuers, many with their bare hands, stripped them and hosed them down.

A man narrating a video of motionless children, lined up as if sleeping, was able to come up only with sentence fragments. “A whole family,” he repeated.

Unlike the people around the globe who found these videos on social media, several of those watching them outside the hospital in Reyhanli had witnessed the scenes in real life.

You wouldn’t have known it, however, by looking at their blank faces. “We’ve seen so much of this,” Mr. Abu Amash said. “It’s normal. We see this every day. We had six years of it.”

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/world/middleeast/syria-hospital-airstrike-gas-attack.html