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About 100 people gathered at the UW Quad at 6 PM, with an open mic format where people shared stories about her, or sang protests songs related to Palestine. It was unrealistic to expect the event to be “non-political”, but even in the mix of positivity and anger, it mostly stuck to sentiments that the real person probably would have agreed with. (It was in fact the first pro-Palestine event in Seattle in a long time that didn’t have people openly cheering for Hamas or Hezbollah or October 7th.) The first speaker was Professor Aria Fani, who had been fired from being head of the UW Middle East Center in April for an email he sent criticizing the attacks on Iran ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/03/washington-college-professor-fired-iran-war-criticism ). He brought a lot of joy to his remarks even if he did wrap up with “Fuck the University of Washington, fuck the United States and fuck the cancerous state of Israel!” (I like America, but I get it, if it’s understood to mean fuck America for this specific action. We should have demanded an investigation into Ayşenur’s death and we should stop funding Israel.) I also remembered him from the one-year anniversary vigil last year where he said he divided his time between professorial duties and “digging tunnels for Hhhhhh[phlehm]AMAS!” (I liked that joke because the premise was that Hamas was bad.) After the speakers and songs, people took flowers and we walked to lay them on Ayşenur’s memorial bench, on the path east of 42nd street, on the lawn south of the law school. Then the last speaker, after leading chants of “Free Palestine”, finished with a chant of “Death, death to the IDF!” This was disappointing; yes, you can bend over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they’re taking about the death of the institution, not individual people, but why use a chant at all that ambiguously could be calling for more families to lose their sons and daughters, when there are a million other chants you could use instead? It’s doubtful that the real Ayşenur would have liked that. Hope for peace. Hope that fewer families have to go through this next year. submitted by /u/bennetthaselton |
