State Hornet Broadcast: Sac State celebrates Lunar New Year and mourners remember Tyre Nichols at candlelit vigil

Kris Hall, Lauren Reagan, Fernando Navarrete, Hailey Valdivia, Justine Chahal, Alyssa Branum, Cristian Gonzalez, Erick Salgado, and Jasmine Ascencio

Sac State’s Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Center hosted the Decorate a Lantern event in the Redwood Room at the University Union on Jan. 31, 2023.

The Redwood Room was filled with laughter and excitement as guests hurried to their seats, eager to paint.

The event reached its capacity of 83 sign ups as students and staff joined together to paint the night away in a night of community.

Program Coordinator of the APIDA Center, Andrew Yang, said the turnout of the event was a good reminder of why representation and sharing culture is important. 

The ‘Cloth as Community’ exhibit, which has been in development for three years, celebrated an opening reception Jan. 24 in the University Library Gallery and the Donald & Beverly Gerth Special Collections & University Archives. 

The gallery was presented in partnership with the APIDA Center, Sacramento’s regional Hmong community and Sac State’s collection of Hmong artifacts. 

The gallery will be open through Feb. 25th in the library and in the Donald & Beverly Gerth Special Collections & University Archives until May 19th.

Tyre Nichols’ death has afflicted the Sacramento community he grew up in with anger, solace, pride, hope and grief. The State Hornet spoke with his childhood friend Angelina Paxton, his uncle Johnie Honeycutt and Shani Melinda Drake of the I am SAC foundation. 

Paxton, a 2020 Sac State graduate of Psychology, said she considered being a police officer until the death of her friend. 

“I highly respect them(police) but them(police protecting people like this will forever keep us in fear,” Paxton said.

Community advocates for Nichol’s want to see “Tyre’s law” passed into federal legislation. It would create a duty-to-intervene law for police officers to hold each other accountable.

California already has a duty-to-intervene law, AB 26 or “George Floyd’s law,” but the United States has no such law on the federal level.

With six officers fired in connection to the death of Nichols set as precedent, “Tyre’s Law” would be the next federal police reform law to come after the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021” and would help hold police accountable on a national scale.

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