LGBTQ community groups in the District are holding a vigil in Dupont Circle on Friday after several violent incidents in the last week targeting gay and trans people.

“People are dying. Folks in the LGBT community are being targeted and there seems to be inaction among our District leaders,” says Ryan Downs, an ANC commissioner in Dupont Circle who is helping organize the vigil. “So this is essentially recognition that there is incredible violence in our community, and asking for District leaders to really acknowledge what’s going on and step up their game.”

The D.C. Center For the LGBT Community and other advocacy groups are putting on the event, which was first reported on by The Washington Blade.

A string of incidents in recent weeks have rocked the community, scaring people in a place that has been called one of the gayest cities in the country. At the D.C. Capital Pride Parade on June 8, a man threatened another person with a BB gun, creating a mass panic when people believed there was an active shooter. Seven people were taken to the hospital for injuries they sustained in the aftermath. The event ended early and many attendees were left shaken.

Then last week, on June 13, a 23 year old trans woman named Zoe Spears was shot and killed on Eastern Avenue, a street that straddles the border between D.C. and Prince George’s County Maryland. Spears is the second trans woman of color to be killed in that area this year. The first was Ashanti Carmon, one of Spears’s good friends.

And two days after Spears’s death, a man threatened several trans women with a gun at LGBTQ center Casa Ruby. He drove up to the center, demanded a sex act, and pulled out the weapon, according to Casa Ruby director Ruby Corado.

Corado was close with Spears, who had received services at Casa Ruby for three years. Corado is devastated by her death and by the threats of violence to other members of her center, she told DCist this week.

“This is the tragedy that I think people don’t understand … this is young people losing their lives. Zoe was 23. This is the future, this is the future of our city, and they’re gone,” Corado said. She said that she believes June (Pride month) has always been a dangerous time for LGBTQ people in D.C. because hate rears its head during times of high visibility. “There’s a breed of men in this city that feeds on vulnerable people. Their vulnerability makes them good targets because [the perpetrators] won’t get caught,” she said.

Downs tells DCist that he began planning the vigil in conjunction with Corado and others after Spears’s death, and they plan to honor her life on Friday. Then several other incidents happened in the ensuing days.

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, three people were stabbed inside Dupont Circle gay bar the Fireplace. The Metropolitan Police Department said in a press release that the stabbing resulted from a “verbal dispute,” and it’s not clear if the victims were gay or if the stabbing was motivated by sexual orientation.

At nearly the same time, a gay couple was attacked and robbed on U Street while they were walking from Hawthorne’s to Nellie’s. According to an account shared by one of the men, Karl Craven, on a GoFundMe page, “a mob of 15 guys” began beating his boyfriend, Braden Brecht, after calling him a slur. Craven says in his account that he threw himself on top of Brecht and screamed for help. The men stole Brecht’s phone and Craven’s wallet, and bruised and bloodied Brecht, chipping off part of his front tooth and splitting his lip.

Police have arrested three people in connection with the attack.

Brecht doesn’t have medical insurance, according to the GoFundMe page page, and had no way to pay his ambulance and ER bills. The couple had been considering leaving D.C. after the attack, but the outpouring of support from the community has made them reconsider recently, Craven wrote in an update on the page. People have already donated more than $17,000.

MPD has not responded to questions about either the stabbing or the attack on U Street.

Downs says that he and other LGBTQ organizers in the city are looking for the D.C. government to give more funding to groups who provide services to LGBTQ people. He and a group of other ANC commissioners that call themselves the rainbow caucus plan to release a letter on Monday expressing dissatisfaction with the city’s response to violence against queer and trans people, he says. He says that the toll of such violence and discrimination wears on LGBTQ people who live in the city.

“I grew up in rural Missouri, and I know firsthand what it feels like to be hated and targeted. It also happens here in the District of Columbia even though … we have made so many strides in progress and equality. We still have people being murdered, we still have people being targeted,” he says. “I walk down the street and wonder if I’m going to be the next one, unfortunately.”

Still, he has a message for any LGBTQ person living in the city who may feel afraid as a result of the recent violence: “You’re not alone, you are loved, you are part of a community, and we got your back,” he says.

So far, about 500 people have said they are attending or interested in attending the vigi, which starts at 7 p.m., according to the Facebook event.