DOWNTOWN — FroSkate, a skateboarding collective that centers queer people of color, is hosting a vigil Friday for Tyre Nichols and other victims of police brutality.
The candlelight vigil will start about 5 p.m. at Grant Skate Park, 1135 S. Michigan Ave.
Attendees are encouraged to dress warm and wear colors you’d see during a sunset, including pink, orange, sky blue and purple. Attendees can also bring candles, flowers, notes and photos of loved ones lost to police violence to contribute to a memorial that will remain at the park.
Nichols, a 29-year-old who police officers killed last month during a traffic stop in Memphis, was known to love skateboarding and photographing sunsets.
The vigil, which combines those things, will be focused on honoring Nichols’ humanity with music, meditation, guided movement and a moment of silence. Skaters can bring their boards to skate together.
“We feel so much pain hearing about any deaths caused by the police, but to hear it happen to someone within the skateboarding family just hit home for us on a whole different level,” said Karlie Thornton, froSkate founder and president.
“We came to the conclusion that a healing vigil would be the best way to honor him in Chicago, just to send that message of love and healing to Tyre’s family. It’s something that the community needs in general, a space where we can just take a moment to come together in collective pain and hold each other.”
Thornton said the vigil is just one part of the city’s broader response to Nichols’ death and a “continuation of the conversation” started by protests throughout the country.
“We want it to be a peaceful, healing moment for the community and for people who have experienced wrongdoing at the hands of the police and gone through police brutality themselves, in honor of Tyre,” Thornton said.
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