WASHINGTON-- A rally against hate and a candlelight vigil were held on Friday May 5, 2000, in Pittsburgh, PA in response to the vicious hate crime killings in the city only a week before. Richard Baumhammers of Mount Lebanon, PA, went on a shooting spree on April 28, killing five including a Jewish woman, a man of Indian origin, a Chinese American, a Vietnamese American, and an African American, and also seriously wounding another man of Indian descent, who is still in the hospital.

The rally was titled "Diversity, Respect and Peace," and many members from the community spoke about the need to work together as a community to prevent issues of hate from arising. Kishor Pokharna, a member of the Rotary Club and a member of the Hindu Jain temple, spoke on behalf of the Indian American community and called for the need to create a strong foundation on which the communities could unite and work together. Other speakers included those from each of the communities affected by the hate crime, the Mayor of Pittsburgh, and the Allegheny County Executive.

A candlelight vigil was held at 8:30 p.m. on the same Friday, at the Ya Fei Restaurant, where two of the victims were killed. Nearly 500 people showed up to the vigil, which included speakers from each of the communities affected by the hate crime, as well as: Bill Lann Lee, who is the Acting Assistant Attorney General for civil rights, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA), and many others including Prem Shunmugavelu, Associate at the India Abroad Center for Political Awareness (IACPA).

Shunmugavelu said, “We in the Indian American community should be concerned by the sharp risein hate crimes against our community, and we can no longer sit back and say it doesn’t affect us; we need to take action.” Shunmugavelu was referring to the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium’s facts that said South Asian hate crime incidents rose from two in 1997 to 41 in 1998.