San Francisco Plans Reveal of New Pulse Nightclub Memorial

Keegan (they/them) is a journalist/artist based in Los Angeles.

In honor of the 49 people killed at Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, San Francisco plans to reveal a new memorial, which has been in the works for four years.

The memorial is based on Brazilian artist Wilson Ferreira’s designs featuring a V-shaped shield engraved with the names of the victims, according to the San Francisco Bay Times. Following approval by city and county officials, the memorial will be installed on the second floor of the San Francisco LGBT Center.

AGUILAS (Assembly United Impacting Latinxs to Surpass) organizers led the project after San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors initially set aside $10,000 for a memorial to be produced back in 2017. The funding opened conversations surrounding what kind of memorial would be appropriate, especially given that 90 percent of the lives lost were people of Latin American origin. The fourth floor of the LGBT Center also houses AGUILAs, so the building was a fitting setting for the memorial.

The memorial’s unveiling date is set to be reveal by mid-September, possibly aligning with National Hispanic Heritage Month, from September 15 to October 15.

At the time, Pulse was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States, with another 53 people wounded in addition to those killed. In 2017, the shooting at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas surpassed the pulse shooting as the most deadly on record, killing 60 people.

The Pulse anniversary has since become a day of mourning for many members of the LGBTQ community. This past June saw the site of the shooting become designated as a national memorial in a unanimous vote. Biden signed the resolution into law June 25 in a public White House ceremony, describing Pulse as “a place of acceptance and joy” that instantly “became a place of unspeakable pain and loss.”

“And we’ll never fully recover, but we’ll remember,” Biden says. “And we have to.”

Construction on the memorial has yet to commence, but a winning design serving as the basis for the final concept has been selected.