MESA – Twenty-five years ago on Sept. 15, businessman, father and husband Balbir Singh Sodhi was kneeling outside his Chevron gas station in Mesa, planting flowers to honor victims of the 9/11 attacks.

As he planted his flowers, a pickup truck came around the corner and the driver shot him dead.

Family members and interfaith activists from around the nation gathered Tuesday at the same gas station on University Drive to honor his memory and continue the fight against religious prejudice.

As the day’s sunset colored the sky in warm pink and orange tones, attendees listened to music from Ari Afsar and Sonny Singh, and speeches from the Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews of the Prophetic Foundry, Rami Nashashibi, Ph.D., of Inner-City Muslim Action Network and Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR. 

The event was organized by Revolutionary Love, a nonprofit founded by Sikh activist Valarie Kaur, who described the event as both a recognition of Sodhi’s life and a remembrance of all the lives lost during and following the 9/11 attacks. 

"This gas station is the second ground zero," said Valarie Kaur, while musician Sonny Singh played traditional Sikh music. "It is the ground zero for all the lives that have been lost or shattered in the last 25 years by the way our nation responded to 9/11.”

As part of her opening speech and eulogy, Valerie Kaur asked the audience, “Do you see him?” roughly a dozen times while telling the life story of Balbir Singh Sodhi. "Do you see him? His mother braids his long hair into a joora and makes the patka tight so that his hair stays as he runs through the village with his sisters and brothers," she said. 

Balbir Singh Sodhi was the eldest of his siblings. He was a husband and a father who fled to the United States searching for somewhere he could wear his turban proudly after watching Sikhs lynched and burned in the 1984 anti-Sikh violence in New Delhi and other parts of India. 

After the twin towers of the World Trade Center were attacked in 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi told his brothers he wanted to travel to New York to help with rescue efforts. His brothers discouraged him, saying he didn’t have the training. But in the following days, when their phones were flooded with calls of Sikhs and Muslims becoming victims of post-9/11 hate crimes, they decided to hold a press conference to deliver a message of peace. 

Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed the day before the planned press conference.

His brothers held it anyway on Sept. 16, 2001, and have honored his life every year with a vigil and remembrance. 

City of Mesa Mayor Mark Freeman pays tribute to Balbir Singh Sodhi at a vigil in his honor on Sept. 15, 2026.

Photo by Paige Moore/Cronkite News

Valerie Kaur has continued to tell Balbir Singh Sodhi’s story, but she also brings to light the names of others killed in hate-fueled violence in the weeks after 9/11. She said there were at least 19 more people killed who were Sikh, Muslim, Arab, South Asian, Latina and Indigenous. 

Featured speakers at this week’s vigil traced what has followed since Balbir Singh Sodhi’s murder. Deepa Iyer of the Building Movement Project, who joined civil rights leaders at the Japanese American Memorial in Washington just days after 9/11, said 645 incidents of racial violence, bullying and discrimination were documented that week. She said that 25 years later, a new report found that nearly half of South Asian adults experienced an act of hate in the past year. 

When asked what the reactions would be if Balbir Singh Sodhi’s muder happened today, Rev. Hierald E. Osorto, a Lutheran minister and organizer  of Multifaith Antiracism, Change & Healing in Minnesota, said he couldn’t say whether reactions would be any different.

“I wonder if the world is more chaotic now than it was 25 years ago,” he said. “I think that the intensity of violence has only increased, so maybe the kind of rage might be different than it was 25 years ago.” 

Several of the featured speakers pointed to an incident that happened earlier this month. The Department of Homeland Security posted a flyer depicting a bearded man in a bandana by the name of “Mr. Singh” with the caption “Self-deport or find out.” Four days later, a Punjabi Sikh driver was stabbed in Wyoming. The facts of the case are still being investigated.

"Twenty-five years to the day since Balbir Uncle was killed for the same fear," said Asees Kaur of the Sikh Coalition, "Our government is still teaching people to see a stranger where there's only a neighbor."

Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews compared Balbir Singh Sodhi’s muder to injustices African Americans have faced in the U.S., promising that hate and prejudice will cease to exist in the next 25 years.

"Balbir Uncle would love this sight,” he said. “God's gonna trouble the water. … Love's gonna trouble the water. Our love's gonna trouble the water."

Audience members attend Balbir Singh Sodhi’s 25th anniversary vigil on Sept. 15, 2026.

Photo by Paige Moore/Cronkite News

"We've already forgiven you," Rana Singh Sodhi told him. As Valerie Kaur framed it, “Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is freedom from hate.”

Rana Singh Sodhi thanked the neighborhood, the Sikh community and local law enforcement. He invited Balbir Singh Sodhi’s widow, Joginder Kaur, and grandchildren to the stage.

“We didn’t necessarily know our grandfather,” said one granddaughter. “But coming here every year and talking to all of you that personally knew him and hearing the stories, it keeps his memory alive.”

Another grandchild said the story she loves is that of her grandfather handing out candy to children. “He always gave candy to the kids, he was just a very happy person to be around,” she said.

At his vigil this year, children once again filled the same space with giggles and laughter, a reminder that there is still hope everywhere. 

"Children are playing in the parking lot at this gas station, just like they did when their uncle was handing them out candy,” Valerie Kaur said. “So tonight, with our ancestors at our backs and the children of the future before our eyes, we are going to lift our hearts in song.”

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.