It was a heart-wrenching scene Monday night at Philadelphia City Hall, as local LGBT choruses led more than 2,000 in “True Colors,” “We Shall Overcome” and “Singing For Our Lives” — music that was punctuated by the sobs of family and friends of 18-year-old Akyra Murray.
Murray’s loved ones and classmates from West Catholic Preparatory High School, from which she graduated last week, huddled on the steps of City Hall, beneath the American and rainbow flags, both flying at half-staff.
Murray, 18, was the youngest victim of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning. Murray had been on vacation with her family; her mother, who is still in Orlando, listened in on a cell phone to the speeches at City Hall from city and LGBT community leaders.
Mayor Jim Kenney choked up while talking about Murray, a standout basketball star at West Catholic whom he said he’d seen play.
“I can’t tell you devastating it is that she was in that club,” the mayor said through tears.
Kenney repeatedly reaffirmed the city’s support for the LGBT community.
“This vigil is a way to remember, to mourn and to stay united,” he said.
Unity was a theme throughout the candlelit vigil.
“This is a safe space,” Nellie Fitzpatrick, director of the Office of LGBT Affairs, told the crowd about the vigil. “You are not alone, not a single one of us. No matter how you walk through life — how you pray or worship, your socioeconomic status, ability, disability — you are not alone.”
“Let us hold each other a bit tighter, be a bit kinder, gentler and more forgiving with one another,” added speaker David Acosta. “Never be afraid to say, ‘I love you’ and to mean it. Life is a precious gift and moments are too brief.”
A number of speakers referenced how closely the Orlando tragedy hit for the local LGBT community.
“This happened at Pulse, but this could have been at any of our local LGBT clubs or social gatherings,” said the Rev. Jeff Jordan, who led the crowd in an interfaith prayer.
Nikki Lopez, a native of Daytona Beach, Fla., said she frequented Pulse when coming out, saying it was one of the few “places of solace” for young LGBT people in the area.
Lopez said her mother called her Sunday crying, after she heard after the shooting.
“She said, ‘Nicole, this could have been you,’” Lopez said. “My mother would often wait up until I got home from Pulse, sometimes 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning, even 5 in the morning. That dance floor was my space of transcendence, liberation. Let the dance floor be your authentic place of liberation; don’t let fear strip that power away from you.”
Lopez noted the incident has particularly impacted the queer Latinx community, saying the killer sought to “erase us, make our love unworthy, make it so that we didn’t exist.”
“Look around you,” she told the crowd. “We exist. We exist in power.”
The crowds swelled so large that streets around City Hall had to be shut down to vehicular traffic.
Once the formal speeches ended, many marched around City Hall, holding signs and waving rainbow flags.
A number carried posters calling for tighter gun laws.
“We have to not only fight for our rights but also fight for gun control to make sure this doesn’t happen again anywhere in the world,” said Joe Croft, of Philadelphia
“I think it’s really important that we all need to come together right now,” added Croft, who held a poster that read “Love Must Always Win.” “We’ve gone so far with government reforms and getting the rights we’ve been fighting for for so long, so for something like this to happen, it’s really scary.”
India H., of Schwenksville, said the vigil enabled the community to confront that fear.
“I felt like I had to do something and I didn’t know what. The least I could do was make sure we got as many victims’ names accounted for as possible,” she said about a handmade display of the victims’ names and ages she was carrying.
She described the incident, which came at the height of the LGBT Pride season, as “mood whiplash.”
“When Pride season rolls around, it’s hard not to get giddy because you finally have permission — though not that you need it — to be who you are,” she said. “But then something this horrible and this violence just makes you realize we have so much father to go. Marriage equality is not even a drop in the bucket.”