COVID-19 Memorial Day Vigil

More than 60 grassroots COVID Memorial Day events are being planned across the country on March 1 in solidarity and to call for a national holiday and permanent memorials, many in collaboration with artists from Rose River Memorial, Floral Heart Project, Singing Tree Project and Faces of COVID Victims. These local events and other participants will come together in a virtual COVID Memorial Day event supported by Reimagine.

As the nation reaches one full year of living with—or dying from—COVID, we are also surpassing the grim benchmark of half a million people lost to COVID. The scale of this loss, particularly in BIPOC communities, is unprecedented outside of all-out war; we are now experiencing a 9/11 every single day. The tens of millions of people #MarkedByCOVID are simultaneously fighting a pandemic and managing a groundswell of individual and collective grief.

This one-year mark also means that we are ushering in a new era of tens of millions of people marking the one-year anniversary of the death of their loved one—or in many cases, loved ones each and every day… even as we continue to add to the death toll. That’s why people marked by COVID, along with mayors, state legislators, and Members of Congress are taking action this March 1 as part of a coordinated call for an annual COVID-19 Memorial Day in remembrance of those we’ve lost and will lose as a result of this preventable disaster.

More than 50 mayors from both sides of the aisle in over 26 states have sponsored a U.S. Conference of Mayors Resolution to recognize the first Monday of March as COVID-19 Memorial Day. Additionally, mayors have already passed local ordinances in their cities to proclaim the first Monday in March, COVID-19 Memorial Day. State legislators and other public officials are taking similar action to mark the date.