LETTER FROM OUR FOUNDER ON THE TRAGEDY AT LAPU-LAPU DAY IN VANCOUVER
I am struggling to find the words to capture the profound grief and the seething rage I feel about the tragedy that occurred at the Lapu Lapu Festival, while also trying to hold the immense complexity that I know underlies this act of violence. I weep with my Filipino/a/x community in K'emk'emeláy̓/Vancouver and all across the diaspora and homeland whose families have been broken and whose sense of safety has been seriously shattered. I weep for the loss of precious life, the loss of dreams, the loss of futures, the loss of possibilities.
I arrived in Vancouver about a week ago with the intention of deepening my connection with the Filipino/a/x community here. Part of the plan for that deepening was to experience the joyful celebration that is Lapu-Lapu Day. Lapu-Lapu Day honours Datu Lapu-Lapu, the Filipino chieftain who resisted colonial forces and defeated Magellan at the Battle of Mactan in 1521. It is a day meant to celebrate our rich and vibrant culture, our ongoing history of colonial resistance, and our powerful struggle for liberation.
It is still that day.
Tragically, it is also now a day marked by unbearable loss and pain, or – in a word that English fails to capture – of pakikiramay.
In the midst of this immense grief, I am also trying to make sense of how it could have happened. What kind of risk assessment did the police run? Why were there no basic precautions taken? If what I read about the culprit is true – that his brother was murdered and his mother committed suicide, that he was known to police from a long history of mental health issues, that a family member contacted a hospital psych ward hours before the attack due to his deteriorating mental health – then I must ask a million more questions.
How could the police have known this person and the condition they were in and still not be able to prevent an attack like this? How could there be so many warnings present and yet no interventions? How is it that the police has, once again, failed to protect the communities they so proudly claim to serve? How do we continue to let mental health issues go unaddressed in such dangerously harmful ways? How is it that we live in one of the richest countries in the world and still fail to provide the care and support and resources that could have prevented this tragedy? How? How? How? How?!?!?!?
My mourning turns into a ball of rage and I do not know how to express it or articulate it or really what to do with it yet. But I know that I personally will not channel this anger for a man, it is too precious for that. Instead, I choose to channel my divine rage towards a racist and colonial system that continues to assault our beautiful brown bodies and disrupt our joy and weaponize our grief with its continuous failures — which I know deep down are not really "failures" so much as it is the sophisticated and horrific design of this system.
As I grapple with this blinding anger and heavy, heavy grief, and as the news headlines over the next few weeks, months, years of this investigation and trial and whatever else comes next takes over, I remind myself that crime and punishment is vastly different from accountability and justice, and even farther from healing.
I turn to Roza Nozari's words time and time again: "let this grief and this rage radicalize me towards more compassion and courage."
While I'm honestly bone tired of all the grief and of all the rage and of being endlessly radicalized, I know it is a path that leads to the accountability, justice, and healing that our community truly longs for.
As a Filipina-Canadian, I strive to honour the spirit of Lapu-Lapu and continue his legacy of resistance against colonial systems that work to divide our communities.
As the steward of Living Hyphen, I strive to wield our gifts of storytelling and story sharing towards our collective healing and our shared liberation.
Let this grief and this rage radicalize all of us towards more compassion and courage.
To my dearest kapwa, please know that whatever you are feeling in this moment is valid, is necessary, is sacred.
Feel it, tend to it, honour it.
Isang bagsak. Ingat lagi. Mahal kita.
Justine