Rest Easy and Burn Bright, Dave Vasey

To our lost friend and comrade, Dave Vasey, and those he left behind.

Words come slow in times like these. Sometimes the struggle to find the right words feels more like a further burden, weighing us down, making us feel as though we have failed a second time at doing our dear friend justice.

And maybe that’s because words alone are never quite enough to change anything.

Each time the fire inside one of us is extinguished, we lose as a collective. We lost three days ago. We lost a beautiful human, a defiant spirit, a part of us. It is, at once, no one’s fault and everyone’s fault. Take that to heart.

Dave, you will be missed. You are missed. I’m sorry. We’re all sorry.

We felt like we needed to do something. And so – instead of just words – we choose to keep your fire alive the only way we know how. By acting bravely as you did so many times in life; by causing some trouble for those profiting off destruction in your name.

A few nights ago, a couple of us cut a hole in the Hamilton Shell Refinery fence and dove through. We painted “For Freedom, For Vasey” on the side of one of the holding tanks and signed it with an anarchy heart.

We promise to never stop pushing forward, to make sure all your work – whether it be antifascist or antipipeline – was not wasted.

But more than that…We promise to be more careful, to hold each other closer, to build communities where no one is disposable and everyone is necessary. Communities that recognize that we need to be hard on our enemies and soft on each other.

Thank you, friend, for fighting for so long.
Rest easy and burn bright.

For community.

For anarchy.

For freedom.

For Vasey.