Sister Melinda Pellerin of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield and a Pioneer Valley Project board member pours water to honor Indigenous people, enslaved Africans, people who have suffered under oppression and those killed by “police violence” and ICE.
Reminder Publishing photo by Sarah Heinonen
SPRINGFIELD — Cars streamed into the parking lot of South Congregational Church on the evening of Jan. 13.
When the church’s parking lot was full, people parked a block away and hustled through the cold back to the church.
Inside, about 150 people packed into a space on the ground floor, leaving it standing room only. Members of several different faiths and religious traditions gathered to pray together, not for any one person, but for the those who have died in interactions with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and the millions of people in America who are living in fear.
“Friends this is a nightmare,” said Bishop Douglas Fisher of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts. “We catch people when they fall, and right now, in the country, as they fall into fear.” He paraphrased Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe as saying that the Episcopal Church is the “church of resistance” against the “rising tide of authoritarianism and Christian nationalism” in the federal government.
“The people in this room are suffering right now,” said Sister Melinda Pellerin of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield and a board member of the Pioneer Valley Project, which organized the vigil. She spoke of the “terror” people are experiencing throughout the country, particularly immigrants. “We must name the injustice. These are holy times. We are the better angels,” she said, referencing President Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 inaugural address calling for unity in the country.
Prayers were also offered by South Congregational Church’s Rev. Lindsey Peterson, Rev. Dr. Atu White of Mt. Zion Baptist Church and Rev. Jason Seymour of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Greater Springfield. Pellerin, Laraine Shore-Suslowitz of Sinai Temple and Adan Abdi, a leader in Springfield’s Somali Bantu community led the gathered people in a lamentation ritual.
Seymour drew a line from the Jan. 7 shooting of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to the murder of Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister who was killed in Selma, Alabama, when he went to assist Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement.
Calling attention to the table at the front of the room, which held a candle and dozens of names and photos, Pellerin led the lamentation, saying, “For every person whose image and name you see here tonight who has been killed by ICE…” The group responded in unison, “We name their humanity.” The call and response continued, with those gathered pledging to “carry the sorrow” of grieving families and refuse to be silent.
Shore-Suslowitz spoke about the Jewish tradition of lamentation as a call to “repair a broken world.” Abdi read two verses from the Qur’an in both Arabic and English. The first verse was a prayer to Allah to protect and rescue people from oppression. The second passage spoke of Allah not giving people more burdens than they can bear.
The vigil recognized fear and suffering beyond that of immigrant communities, also calling out the burning of Beth Israel Temple in Jackson, Mississippi, and the 2020 arson of Springfield’s own Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Presbyterian Church.
Alex Blenman, a member of the Episcopal Service Corps, said he came to the vigil to become more involved in the community. “Seeing what people are going through, it seems a little unfair to say the least,” he said of the experiences of immigrants. He noted that his grandparents immigrated to the United States from Trinidad and Tobago in the 1960s.
David Morse, a member of Sinai Temple, said he has long been active in the fight for “immigrant rights” in the Pioneer Valley. The vigil was “a call for interfaith communities to work against the fear that is in our community, and there’s a large immigrant community in Springfield, and people are scared,” Morse said. “I wish there was more we could do to influence the political climate in the country, but we’re here as a community.”
