Thomas Breen photos
Katz at Tuesday’s vigil. Below: A memorial for Kevin Jiang at Nicoll and Lawrence.
Natalia Katz attended an anti-gun violence rally in Fair Haven Saturday afternoon, and left feeling buoyed by community efforts to stop further bloodshed.
By the time she got home to her East Rock apartment later that same night, she found police cars everywhere and a dead body in the middle of the street — the city’s sixth homicide victim already this year.
Katz recounted that juxtaposition of events Tuesday afternoon during a vigil held at the corner of Lawrence and Nash streets in the Goatville section of East Rock, not far from where 26-year-old Yale grad student Kevin Jiang was shot dead at around 8:30 p.m. Saturday.
Police believe that Jiang, who was engaged to be married, may have been targeted when he was killed near his fiancee’s house, and are still investigating the case.
Roughly 25 people turned out for Tuesday’s event. It was organized by Ice The Beef, a local youth-led, anti-violence group that holds rallies and marches and vigils across the city just about every time someone is killed in New Haven.
Ice The Beef members, in prayer on Nash St.
The very same Ice The Beef members — including Katz — who led an anti-gun violence rally outside Columbus Family Academy on Grand Avenue on Saturday held the mic Tuesday at the corner of Nash and Lawrence as they commemorated the latest victim of New Haven’s recent surge in violent crime.
And as they speak out about how all shootings, all murders, in all corners of the city, are as deserving of as much attention and mourning and outrage as Jiang’s.
Carmon with East Rock Alder Charles Decker.
“This is an everybody thing,” said Ice The Beef President Chaz Carmon. “We’re all affected by this stuff. Sometimes it’s in Fair Haven, sometimes it’s in East Rock. Nobody’s safe.”
Looking out at the group that had gathered around the corner of Lawrence and Nash, Carmon remarked upon “all of the ethnicities” of those present.
“Last year, whether a bullet goes through a 19-year-old’s window, or a 17-year-old is shot in Waterbury, all these things affect all of us. We have to be in this together.”
Katz, a 24-year-old Hamden native who lives in an apartment near Nash and Lawrence, described how she attended the Ice the Beef rally in Fair Haven Saturday afternoon.
“There was this feeling of a lot of hope and healing at that space in Fair Haven,” she said. “I left feeling admiration and inspiration for the young people fighting the fight” against gun violence. “With so much upliftment, it can be easy to walk away thinking it’s almost behind you.”
She said she returned to East Rock roughly half an hour after Jiang’s murder had taken place. The police had taped off the block. She could see Jiang’s body still lying dead in the street.
Attendees at Tuesday’s vigil.
“It was horrible,” she said. “I started crying. I needed to move. I didn’t know how to process.” She said she called Ice the Beef organizer Remidy Shareef for help. “He had the wisdom to tell me to not do much, to just write on it,” she said.
“I’m hopeful that if anything, the tragedy of this event is an opportunity to see that gun violence exists throughout New Haven and is not something that has been put to rest,” she said. “I’m grateful for all the people that are willing to fight this important fight.”
Ice The Beef Vice-President Manual Camacho (pictured) was also at Saturday’s Fair Haven rally, which he helped lead.
He said his “heart broke that very moment” when he found out that, hours after one anti-gun violence in one part of the city, another person elsewhere in the city had been shot and killed.
Gun violence “knows no boundaries,” he said, “and it will make itself present anywhere and anytime.”
Shareef’s own nephew, Ibrahim Valentino Shareef Jr., was one of 20 people in New Haven to be shot and killed last year. He died during a uniquely violent stretch last summer that saw three homicides and 11 shootings in 10 days.
On Tuesday, Shareef (pictured above) called for a moment of silence for Jiang, as well as for Alfreda Youmans, Jeffrey Dotson, Jorge Osorio-Caballero, Marquis Winfrey, Joseph Vincent Mattei, and Tyirck Keyes.
“Our city has failed people,” he said. “We as a human family have failed people. This is just more of what we don’t need.”
What the city needs to do now, he said, is “come together on a consistent basis and say we’re not going to stand for this. Every time someone is slain,” elected officials in particular need to show up, talk with the families and neighbors, and stand alongside them.
“We know that all lives are sacred,” Josh Williams (pictured) said before offering a prayer for the group. He spoke of Police District 7, which includes both Newhallville and East Rock.
“Each life that’s lost in either place in the district is sacred. But there’s a question of, are we going to commit ourselves to be shepherds no matter where we find the bodies? No matter where we find the lives? No matter where we find the needs for peace?”
Carmon left the group with two “action items,” legislative priorities related to gun violence that he thinks New Haveners should press on if they want the bloodshed to truly stop.
Michelle Phuong Ting at Tuesday’s vigil: “I did not know Kevin. But I know he was once living, breathing, beautiful and beloved.”
One is to call on the Board of Alders to declare gun violence a public health crisis, just as the local legislature declared racism a public health crisis last summer and has spent months working on specific policy responses designed to address the public health fallout of such a crisis.
He said Ice The Beef is also calling on the federal government, and the new Joe Biden-Kamala Harris Administration, to prioritize providing adequate resources nationwide to address a sharp spike in violence that has occurred in cities across the country since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic last spring.
“Let’s make sure we’re investing in youth centers,” Carmon said. “We’ve got to start talking about putting this on the agenda.”
We are all in this together.
Violence, car jacking, crime, and gun violence harms us all.
Every time a shooting occurs, the community needs to stand up, speak out, and say no more.
Every time a car is jacked, the community needs to stand up and speak out.
Every time a crime is committed with a weapon or with violence, the community needs to stand up and speak out.
It's not just a New Haven thing, it's not just a city thing, it's happening in Hamden, it happened in West Haven, it happened in East Haven, it happened in Madison, it happened in Newtown, it happened in Old Saybrook.
Cars are being jacked and stolen all over the state and driven to another town to dump, or car chases with police are going through the cities and suburbs. People have been killed from gun violence all over this state, all over this country.
We are all in this together.
Violence hurts everyone.
Silence is complicity.
Stand up, speak out, say no more.