Silent Vigil to Take Place

In the wake of highly publicized police shootings of young African-American men, and the subsequent refusal of grand juries to indict the officers involved, a silent vigil for racial justice will happen tomorrow from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Bridgehampton war memorial. Those in attendance plan to hold placards with the name of a victim of such incidents.

Erling Hope of Sag Harbor is an organizer of the vigil. In a message announcing the vigil that was posted on Facebook, he asked the public to attend, writing that one goal was to “humanize the victims of an unjust system, to remind us of the reality behind statistics and news stories, to make it known that black lives matter.”

Yesterday, Mr. Hope decried the “oversimplification of complex human realities.” “It’s of a piece with the racism we’re trying to change. I’m trying to keep this a simple thing about the victims of these crimes, to humanize them.”

While he acknowledged that police officers have a very difficult job, he cited the grand jury testimony of Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August, in which he likened Mr. Brown to a “demon” in the moments before the shooting. “There is clearly some kind of dehumanizing happening between law enforcement and communities of brown and black skin,” Mr. Hope said.

Mr. Hope is approaching the event from the Quaker tradition, he said, in which being a witness to injustice and human tragedy is done through silent vigil. “To my mind, the silence will speak louder than the words will,” he said. “There’s also an engagement with a 30-year history, now, of the association of names with war memorials, which may be subtle reference.”