Homeless Sacramento County Residents Who Died In 2020 Remembered At Vigil Listen
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Faye Wilson Kennedy holds a sign remembering Vanessa Diane Franklin, who died earlier this year, Monday, December 21, 2020.
Andrew Nixon / CapRadio
Gregory Tarola, 63.
These are the names of some of the 90-plus people who died on the streets and in homeless shelters in Sacramento County in 2020.
Advocacy groups read each person’s name Monday night during a candlelight vigil at Sacramento City Hall marking the seventh annual Interfaith Homeless Memorial.
The event was part of National Homeless Memorial Day, which is recognized in cities across California where hundreds of unhoused people succumb each year to substance abuse, heart disease, violent injuries and sometimes hypothermia. The memorials are held annually on the winter solstice, the longest night of the year.
It is that moment in open space with no corners to worry about, in plain sight, just part of the fabric of urban existence and survival when the isolation is sometimes eased a little for a homeless person.
Be it a park, a field, a lot or a curb, the homeless person is away from the judgement of “the busy” with a chance to slow the mind and digest the day. Perhaps they will talk to themselves and re-enact the injustice of the day or of the years to make sense of it all, or to just hear their voice in the face of silence. It is a chance to let their guard down.
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