LGBTQIA+ organizations in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley hosted a vigil Nov. 20 to commemorate the victims of the fatal Club Q shooting. On Dec. 1, Chapman University followed in Roaring Fork’s footsteps, hosting a vigil at the Fish Interfaith Center to remember those lost to Club Q, the students who died at the University of Virginia and the University of Idaho and those who died in shootings in Chesapeake, Virginia.

“We had a lot of scared and upset people in our community because of the shooting,” Steve Mills, the co-founder of Gay For Good who attended the vigil in Colorado, told The Panther. “I felt I needed to be there to show them that they are loved by a majority of people in the Roaring Fork Valley and we are there for them: that night and always.”

To organize the vigil for Colorado residents to have a space to mourn the victims, Mills worked alongside (PFLAG) head Sheri Smith, AspenOUT Executive Director Kevin McManamon and Janet Gordon, a board member of Gay For Good and contributor to AspenOUT’s therapy services.

In an interview with The Panther, McManamon said the organizations had booked Glenwood Spring’s Bluebird Cafe for a PFLAG meeting on Nov. 20, and they swiftly adopted the space and time for a vigil. 

“We have a really tight-knit community, and there is a coalition of people that are relatively new that helped us organize,” McManamon said. “It came together very quickly through a few texts and phone calls. Between Gay For Good and our (Aspen OUT’s) social media, we got the word out really quickly to ask people to attend.”

Gordon, a Roaring Fork licensed counselor for the LGBTQIA+ community, informed The Panther about the importance of community in times of grief.

“On an emotional level, gathering in grief can be really important and really necessary because a lot of times our reaction to grief is to isolate,” Gordon said. “It is healing to know that other people are out there and care and that we have a community moving forward.” 

For Gordon, the vigil was also intended to be a platform for the LGBTQIA+ community to have a voice. 

“I encourage everyone to see ‘ally’ as a verb,” Gordon said. “Personally, as an ally, it’s so important to me that allies be active. Anything I can do to help the LGBTQIA+ community have a voice, use their voice, have a safe place to express their voice, it is really important work to do. The voices of the LGBTQIA+ community have been under threat and silenced for so long, and this shooting was just another example of an attempt to silence LGBTQIA+ voices.” 

Aspen High School teacher Morgaine Atkinson, who also attended the Colorado vigil, noted the atmosphere.

“The atmosphere felt warm — we knew we were not alone and that we filled the room with love,” Atkinson said. “Even if we did not know each other personally, we support, love and protect one another. We began passing out the candles from one hand to another, making sure no one was left out. Then, with a start of a single flame, we lit up the whole room. It was beautiful.” 

Atkinson continued with the shared grief felt at the vigil.

“Yet, there still was tension in the air, an unsettling feeling of grief, trauma and sorrow,” Atkinson said. “No one should ever feel unsafe. We were all heartbroken.”

According to Atkinson, the vigil was a stand against the Club Q tragedy, which she noted to be a “personal attack on the LGBTQ+ community.”

“We will not live in fear. That is why we need to hold functions like this to remember,” Atkinson said. “Everyone ended their thoughts by taking this horrific event as a reminder that we as a community still have a long way to go with the issue of hate towards the LGBTQ+ community, yet, we do have power. We can unite, set out for change and stand up for what is right.”

Chapman ​​professor in the Humanities department Kevin Nguyen-Stockbridge was a speaker at the Fish Interfaith vigil. Nguyen-Stockbridge said at the vigil that having hope in times of tragedy is “having confidence that good remains”.

Nguyen-Stockbridge told The Panther that vigils are essential in small communities and at private universities like Chapman.

“Things that move through this community reverberate a lot faster because we know each other, and part of knowing each other means that we have the capacity to hurt more deeply together, and to heal more deeply together,” Nguyen-Stockbridge said. 

For Nguyen-Stockbridge, in times of ambiguity and sorrow following the Colorado Springs tragedy, vigils can be a space to reclaim humanity together.

“I think particularly when we are looking at violence and we are looking at loss and death, such as the shootings, we come to be here at this vigil to name and reclaim our humanity with each other,” Nguyen-Stockbridge said. “The only way to repair from that is to be together, to grieve together and to acknowledge that none of us have all the answers, but the thing that we do have is our solidarity.”

For Mills, vigils such as the Glenwood Springs and Chapman vigils not only provided community and a space to grieve, but they helped to fight back against violence toward the LGBTQIA+ community. 

“(The vigil) sent a strong message that we are here and we are not going to tolerate hate of any kind in our valley,” Mills said. “If you promote hate, we will expose you so others know you pose a threat. We will not allow others to treat us as less than or allow them to scare us back into the closet.”