Standing Together in Uncertain Times: Vermillion Remembers Alex Pretti
About 200 people from the community and the USD student body gathered at Ratingen Platz in downtown Vermillion Monday night for a candlelight vigil to remember Alex Pretti.
Pretti was a 37-year-old man, who was shot 10 times and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis Saturday, Jan. 24. He was an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2011.
Geoffrey Gray-Lobe, a Clay County commissioner, said when he heard about Pretti’s death he felt a lot of anxiety and grief.
Gray-Lobe said he is not a gun owner like Pretti, but if he were standing where Pretti was, he would have done the same things that he did. Gray-Lobe said he organized the vigil with other Vermillion residents to bring the community together during this time.
“We have a great community here,” Gray-Lobe said. “It’s the kind of thing where I knew that all across town, I knew at least this many people were feeling those same things that I was feeling. Distraught and terrified for the state of our country.”
Kelsey Collier-Wise also helped put together the program for the vigil. She said that if anyone feels compelled to step up, then they should do it.
“If someone else feels like they want to hold a vigil, they want to hold a protest, they want to take an action, they should absolutely do it,” Collier-Wise said. “We’re just people that decided to do something and they are also people that can decide to do something.”
Collier-Wise said people should surround themselves with others to find cohesion, which is what she believes helps people through difficult times.
“I think what I see in our community, and I think is definitely present when I talk to my friends in Minneapolis and all over the country, is that people love their neighbors and the people that they interact with every day,” Collier-Wise said.
“I think that says something to us that if the people who know us best think that we’re good people and want to be at peace with us, that means that that is the whole country. A lot of the divisiveness is manufactured to drive us apart, but we know the people that we go to work with, that we live next to and that we do things with, we know that they’re good people.”
Gray-Lobe wants to remind people that the path that we’re on isn’t determined yet. Even looking back through history, it’s easy to think that some things have to turn out the way that they did, but to Gray-Lobe, that’s never been true.
“At every moment in history, it was always undecided what was going to happen next,” Gray-Lobe said. “The path that we end up on, it depends on all of us picking the right path, so don’t be passive in this time. Lead with love, see the full humanity and all the people around you, and we can have a bright future instead of a dark future.”
