Boston vigil for the victims of Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

There was a rally on the Common this afternoon, and while I wasn't sure I wanted to go in the sense that I expected to take comfort from it, I wanted to go to support other people, as a political statement.

One speaker was a member of the Squirrel Hill Synagogue who is in her sophomore year at BU; she said she didn't have words right now, but she did, good ones.

The event was labeled a "vigil," but it was also significantly a political rally: not just that the speakers included a lot of Massachusetts politicians, but for what they said. Gov. Baker (he's a Republican) said appropriate and unsurprising things about unity; several of the other speakers explicitly called out the Trump administration's rhetoric and policy, to loud applause. Attorney General Maura Healy reminded us that her office has a hate crimes hotline, established right after the 2016 election. I'm fairly sure this is the first time I've heard from the State Treasurer; she told us about HIAS helping her husband when he came to this country in the 1950s.

The religious speakers included a few rabbis, people from at least three Christian denominations (the only one I'm sure of was a Presbyterian minister from Roxbury), and a sheik speaking on behalf of a local Muslim group.

One of the first speakers read the names of the victims, and the vigil ended with the mourners' kaddish.

Meanwhile...

• I went to another Friends of Captain Awkward meetup this morning, and had fun talking with half a dozen other women, and even did a bit of coloring.
• In addition to my postcards to voters, I just mailed twenty "please vote because..." cards that came, pre-addressed and postage-paid, from a group called Need to Impeach.
• Two people complimented my blue hair within about ten minutes today; one of them was a barista whose beard was dyed a striking dark blue/purple (over natural brown)
• As I was getting dressed this morning, I grabbed my Black Lives Matter/Love Is Real (etc.) t-shirt, though I expected it would be covered by another layer. I also put on my Scrabble-tile earrings, as a reminder of my beloved (the tiles are their initials) and the Hebrew-letter pendant adrian_turtle gave me as a love/relationship token, which I hadn't worn in a while. (The reminder hasn't seemed as important/necessary now that I live near her.) All together, that's dressing for symbolism and psychological comfort.
• Getting off the T at Davis this afternoon we ran into jbsegal, who I hadn't seen in a while, and chatted with him for a couple of blocks. He was on his way home from the same rally we were; several people on the train were coming back from the Yes on 3 rally that started an hour earlier.
• It seems worth noting that before the rally, someone came through the crowd giving away "kosher pareve cookies"; I took one, something in a chocolate chip direction. The cookie was okay, and that they were just being given away was cheering.