1/25/26 The Vigil

If you haven't heard the news, this morning an observer named Alex Pretti was shot and killed by ICE. He was recording what ICE was doing, then an agent tackled him, his legal & concealed pistol was seized from him, and as he was being restrained by a group of officers he was shot in the back multiple times. He was unarmed and showed no aggression.

Many neighbourhoods in my city started to plan vigils for him. I heard about plans for a vigil in my area and decided to get involved. I heard about the event at 12, and the event was planned to start at 7pm (and there wasn't even a flyer made for it yet). I was very productive today helping with the vigil!

My partner created a flyer for the event (3 other designs where made by the community, but my partners was one of the group favorites). I printed a bunch of them in 3 sizes:

3 identical posters that are advertising an event, printed in different sizes

11x17 size, letter size, and 1/4th letter size

I asked for help distributing the flyers and 3 community members responded! I gave each person a big stack of posters a couple rolls of tape. Posting the signs is really painful work in -5F weather. The only way to work with the tape effectively is to use your bare hands. Gusts of wind would also cause the tape to roll right back up on its self frequently. I'm so glad others helped out with it, I never would have been able to cover my area as effectively as they did. I could only stand being outside without gloves for about 5 minutes at a time.

They really covered the area too! On my walk there and back I saw the flyers posted everywhere!

Me standing next to a poster that is advertising an event

Me next to one of the flyers I didn't personally hang. It's cool really seeing a group effort orchestrated with strangers pay off!

The attendance was great, around 300 people showed up! Many other vigils happened across the city as well.

A gathering of people holding candles

I wasn't able to get a good picture unfortunately... I know this picture makes it look like there was like 80 people, I just couldn't capture the entirety of it!

A candle memorial display for Alex was erected. People came and went taking turns reflecting in a moment of silence at the display.

Flowers and candles placed on top of snow


Someone brought a megaphone and passed it around to community members. Some had beautiful prepared speeches about who Alex Pretti was, some spoke about the importance of community, and others made calls to action and instructed community members how they can get involved with local efforts. There was hot coco, candles, and someone set up a fire for warmth. A local business also stayed open for folks who needed to warm up and handed out free hot tea.

After the speakers where done, people split up into circles and connected with each other. A lot of neighbours meeting other neighbours. It was a nicely put together and enjoyable event!

The do-ocracy

This event didn't really have a leader. Or if it did, not many knew who they were. Despite connecting myself deeply into the communications, I had no idea who initiated the idea of having this event. All of this was put together by community members deciding to step up and fill the gaps. There wasn't enough structure to get approval or instructions on what to do. All you could really do is message a group chat with 50 people and ask "hey does this sound good?" and sense the vibe from the 2-5 people who decide to respond to your request.

I learned about the phrase "do-ocracy" from other users while mapping on Open Street Maps recently. It's the idea that if you want something done, do it. Don't make a big scene getting permission, having others hold your hand through it, etc. Identify what you think needs to be done, go through the effort to make sure what you're doing is correct, then do it. If someone has a problem with it, they can talk to you about it and you two can come up with a consensus moving forward. If it turns out what you did isn't desired for some reason, it can be undone or changed.

This is also the philosophy Wikipedia operates on, they advocate that editors be bold . See something wrong? Something missing? Don't just talk about fixing it, fix it! Put your opinion in discussions. Just don't break the rules, don't be destructive, and be careful. Talk with other contributors when the time calls for it. Don't take it personally when other people edit your work. They say: "Think about it this way: if you don't find one of your edits being reverted now and then, perhaps you're not being bold enough."

Thinking back in life, there were many times I wanted to help with a group effort but felt unable to because no one was telling me what to do. Now in retrospect looking at things, almost all group efforts have a certain degree of do-ocracy to them. Not understanding that often made me unable to find my place.


It seems like I'm bad at this whole micro-blog thing, as soon as I start writing it all starts to spill out and it becomes macro xD. Believe it or not, this is after deciding to leave a lot out. Can you tell I struggle with scope creep? Oh well, it seems like even in the micro "post of the day" format I'll be spilling out long rambles haha