'We Live Resilience': Seattle Filipino Community Grieves Victims of Vancouver Tragedy

On a rainy Monday evening, community members gathered in Chinatown-International District for a place to grieve.

A crowd filled a small room on King Street's A Resting Place, a cultural resource center for grief. On one side of the room were lumpia, pancit, and other donated Filipino foods. On the wall, a poster showcased pictures of the 11 victims who were killed when a man drove an SUV into the crowd during the Lapu Lapu Day Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia, just days before. Ages of the deceased ranged from 5 to 65 years old. Dozens of attendees were injured and remain in the hospital.

The vigil in the CID was the first of two since the tragedy. The other was held at the Filipino Community Center in Seattle's Rainier Valley on Tuesday, April 29. 

Vita Israel-Cabanilla, a longtime member of multiple Seattle-based Filipino organizations, had been on that street all day hanging out with her friends, she said. When news began to circulate, her phone filled with text messages of people asking if she had seen their loved ones. 

"That was somebody's tita [auntie], that was somebody's lola [grandma]," Israel-Cabanilla said as she sat on a plastic bench outside the venue. "That could've been my family."

Filipinos from around the world attended the festival for its second year. The day was dedicated to the Indigenous leader Datu Lapu-Lapu of Mactan, who led the charge to defend their land against Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. The celebration included local vendors, food trucks, and dance performances. 

Upon hearing the news, local organizers from SIKLAB Jose Rizal Coalition and other groups quickly worked to support the interconnected Filipino communities, from Vancouver to Seattle.

"We have a community, rich in skills and gifts," SIKLAB organizer Robert Gavino said Monday, April 28. "We have grief workers, we have national organizers, we have social workers. How can we love on each other right now?"

On Monday, Filipino Community of Seattle (FCS) program director Bennyroyce Royon said, "Being Filipinos, we don't just talk about resilience, we live resilience," referring to centuries of resisting colonialism and political corruption. 

As director of FCS's "Kalahi," a Filipino folk dance troupe, Royon and his troupe attended the festival for his dancers to perform for the second year in a row. After the group left the stage, Royon went back to his hotel room. That's when they started hearing sirens.

"They [dancers] performed on those streets," Royon said. "It was a day to celebrate our shared identity and our cultural heritage, and now it's been marked by this."

On Tuesday, community organizers held a second vigil at the Filipino Community Center (FCC) in the Rainier Valley.

Multiple generations of Filipinos filled the FCC ballroom. Attendees laid flowers along the back wall, underneath QR codes to GoFundMe links for victims and survivors of the massacre.

At FCC, Gavino read the names of the deceased. The crowd chanted "mabuhay," or "long live," after each name was called.

"Promise that you will live, that you will take what you have in this life and make a world where all of us can live well," Gavino said to the crowd. "Make 'mabuhay' a promise."

Having been at the festival, Israel-Cabanilla said the tragedy has been difficult to process. But she said being around community and those she considers family is what has helped her the most.

"We are kabayan [fellow Filipinos]," Israel-Cabanilla said Monday. "When we go through hard times, we go through it together as a community. Having a space like this today is very important."