You are invited to join API Chaya’s 2021 Vigil Brunch Dialogues, “Kapwa: Remember The Self, Remembering Each Other”,  held on March 6th, 14th, 20th, and 28th 11AM-1:30PM. This programming will be held on Zoom and streamed on Facebook. For accessibility requests, please go to tinyurl.com/vigil21access.

Every year, API Chaya hosts a vigil to honor lives ended by domestic and seuxal violence. In particular, this vigil honors the lives of Susana Remerata Blackwell and her unborn baby Kristine, and her friends Phoebe Orbiso Dizon and Veronica Laureta Johnson. All three were murdered by Susana's abusive husband on March 2nd, 1995. Leading up to their deaths, Phoebe and Veronica supported Susana in seeking services and care to keep her safe from the harm she was surviving.

The API Women and Family Safety Center was birthed from the community organizing response to these murders, and later merged with Chaya, working to serve South Asian survivors in similar circumstances. Thus, in 2011, API Chaya was created. This year, we will continue to honor the lives and friendship of Susana, baby Kristine, Phoebe, and Veronica, and others who suffer from the harms of intimate violence at our Digital Vigil, which will run throughout the month of March 2021.

The recurring theme of our vigil through the years has been, “Kapwa”, a Tagalog term meaning the shared interconnectedness among and between beings; envisioning the self in connection to the other. In this way, surviving violence can be understood as an act of interdependence, a space where forming meaningfulness out of grief and pain is uplifted through a shared sense of self.

This year, in recognition of our organizing history and in honor of lives that have ended and continue to perish due to interpersonal and systemic violence, we invite communities to reflect on the question, “How does grief move and transform our movements?”.