Member-only story

Remembering Amber and Rubén

Pranav Jani
3 min readApr 7, 2020

--

Rest in power, comrades

This time in early April will forever become a time of pain and sadness — but also inspiration and hope — for the social justice community in Columbus.

April 5, 2019 was the memorial service for Amber Evans, who went missing on January 28. And on April 6, the day after attending that memorial service, Rubén Castilla Herrera passed away.

The pain and sadness is obvious. We no longer see our friends and comrades in front of us. We think of the many words unsaid, the times we will not spend with each other, the movements that will miss their leadership and unique abilities to connect people.

And yet there is inspiration and hope, too. Ideas we learned from them, practices we want to emulate. Ways of being in the world that we admire.

In this time of COVID-19 isolation, going through and preserving photos and things that were said last year is part of my remembering them.

Here I am reposting a Facebook note I wrote on April 8 last year, along with this photo.

Photo credit: Ralph Orr

April 8, 2019

To the memory of our two dear friends and comrades, Amber and Rubén who have passed away within the last few weeks.

This is a photo of them together at a 2017 protest of a fundraiser for the mayor…

--

--

Pranav Jani
Pranav Jani

Written by Pranav Jani

Assoc Prof, English, Ohio St (postcolonial/ethnic studies). Social justice organizer. Writer, speaker. Desi. Family guy. Singer. Wannabe cook. He/him. @redguju

No responses yet