Pacific Grove Feast of Lanterns canceled permanently
PACIFIC GROVE, Calif. (KION-TV) UPDATE Feb. 18, 2022, 3:34 p.m.-- The Feast of Lanterns has been permanently canceled according to the Board President.
The Feast of Lanterns Board President said they had originally talked about just changing the event's name but decided to just cancel the event overall and permanently.
The board will meet next week to come up with a different event that is more of a "Beach Celebration" that will include the Pet Parade.
ORIGINAL STORY:
Pacific Grove's annual Feast of Lanterns will not take place in 2022 after much debate at Wednesday's City Council meeting.
The Feast of Lanterns Board of Directors withdrew their application for the summer and the city approved the events calendar without the Feast of Lanterns.
Those opposing it said skipping a year is still not enough.
“Moving forward I would like to see the feast of lanterns end," Member of the Coalition for Asian Justice Monterey Bay Area Randy Sabado said. "The Feast of Lanterns and that celebration didn’t really acknowledge the existence of the Chinese Village. It used cultural appropriation. A lot of the things they did in terms of yellow face and the slanting of the eyes, even though it doesn’t exist anymore it's discriminatory, it's offensive.”
The Feast of Lanterns organizers issued a statement that they're working to keep the event going and apologized to the Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities for any harm caused as a result of the event.
Sabado's wife, Gerry Low-Sabado, was a key voice in advocating for change, before her passing in 2021.
Now several other groups are stepping up and addressing their concerns by sending in letters asking for the Feast of Lanterns festival not to end.
The League of United Latin American Citizens voiced their opposition to the event, demanding Pacific Grove end it.
The City of Pacific Grove is still working to bring the event back for discussion next year.
"What the council did last night is we directed the Diversity Inclusion Task Force to work on our special events policy," Mayor pro tem Jenny McAdams said. "They're going to expedite that, come back in three months and hopefully, we'll have an event policy that's really clear and matches the goals of the city's mission, vision, and values."
For those who wish to memorialize and celebrates the Chinese Fishing Village that once stood less than a mile from this location, you can do so at the Walk of Remembrance.
It's a separate event unrelated to the Feast of Lanterns and takes place in May.
