On Sept. 28, the Chico State Black Student Union held a candlelight vigil in light of the recent events in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I believe that through simply coming together and standing up against police brutality, we were taking a step in the right direction that night.

When I think of protests and standing up for what one believes in nowadays I picture retweets, hashtags and social media “challenges”.

Social media and the web has managed to bring us together yet it still can’t create the kind of changes we all desperately want to see in our society.

It was refreshing to see people actually leave their homes and dedicate an hour of their time to get out and show their support in person.

Seeing that everyone was there for the same cause and allowing the crowd to come up to the stage and speak their minds, made me feel that the growth of the movement was really a community effort.

Each individual discussed an important topic regarding police brutality and the unjust killings of blacks in communities across the United States. The needless violence that occurs daily must come to an end, and that is the point BSU was trying to make at the event.

Jerad Prevost, another member of the BSU, said that many of us choose to dismiss these issues in our minds because most of us are unable to relate to or imagine police brutality taking place in our community.

We all have to realize that police brutality can happen anywhere, even in Chico. By showing up to the candlelight vigil, we as Chico residents were displaying our compassion for the lives lost in communities all throughout the United States.

One thing that I feel would have made the event stronger or perhaps brought us closer to achieving the goal of bringing the community together would have been to see more law enforcement attend the vigil.

Only one police officer from the Chico Police Department attended the event in full uniform.

The vigil served a larger purpose than gaining awareness for the BSU. It showed that when the citizens of a community come together to address an issue, their voices can be heard.

I feel that as individuals, we all have to make contributions to stand up for what is right, and the vigil is just the beginning of that in Chico.

Mina Marjanovic can be reached at [email protected] or @marjanovicmina6 on Twitter.