Ten years after the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a group of survivors and family members directly affected by the tragedy are organizing their own remembrance ceremony this year, independent of one traditionally organized by the city of Orlando.
The ceremony will take place June 12, 2026 — the 10th anniversary of the shooting — at an undisclosed location in downtown Orlando. Tiara Parker, a Pulse survivor who’s assisting coordination efforts with the nonprofit Victims First, told Orlando Weekly that the location is being kept private to “avoid any unwanted guests.” The ceremony is exclusively for Pulse survivors and family members of the 49 victims.
“We wanted to make sure survivors had a voice … and their voice was being heard, and that they had the ability to do what they wanted to do,” Parker told Orlando Weekly.
Many survivors and families directly affected, including Parker, don’t live locally. Parker, a Philadelphia native, was visiting Orlando that fateful weekend in 2016 with her cousin Akyra Murray, when they both entered the LGBTQ+ nightclub for a night of dancing with their friend Patience Carter.
Of the three, only Carter and Parker, then 20 years old, made it out alive.
Murray, who had recently graduated from high school, was the youngest victim of the shooting at just 18 years old.
For Parker, the 10-year mark of her loss raises a mixed reaction. “I’m in disbelief that it’s been 10 years,” she admitted. It doesn’t feel like that much time has passed, she said. And yet, a lot has changed in her life since then.
Since Pulse, Parker has become involved with Victims First, a national nonprofit that aims to empower survivors of mass casualties and today works to support domestic violence survivors through the Philadelphia nonprofit Women Against Abuse. The 30-year-old also founded her own organization (Global Activist Awards), got married, and gave birth to a son just last month. (She warned us he might cry during her phone interview with us — he did not!)
Still, Parker acknowledged that not every survivor or family member is in the same headspace or place in life. Many are still struggling, she said — with their mental health, medical bills or the unshakeable gravity of their loss. “Some people just still feel [it] very fresh as if it happened yesterday, especially for the families of the deceased,” Parker explained. “Everybody’s healing journey is different.”
“Everybody’s healing journey is different.”
Tiara Parker, a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting
Jorshua Hernández, a survivor of the shooting who suffered multiple gunshot wounds, confirmed to the Weekly that he plans to be in town for the survivors-led ceremony. Hernandez moved to Puerto Rico about four years ago, after calling Orlando home for 16 years. He’s still struggling with medical complications from the bullets that were lodged inside his body.
He, like Parker, has been vocally critical of how the city of Orlando managed the aftermath of the Pulse tragedy. This includes their response to questions about code violations at Pulse (which the city claims were resolved by the time of the shooting) and city officials’ complicity with a botched effort by former club owner Barbara Poma to establish a permanent memorial for Pulse victims and survivors.
Most of the victims attending Latin Night at the club the night of the shooting were young, LGBTQ+ people of color who just wanted to dance. It was just after 2 a.m. when the gunman opened fire.
Poma herself, a co-owner of the bar with her husband, Rosario, was vacationing in Cancun at the time of the shooting. Still, within a month of the tragedy, Poma found it within herself to found a nonprofit, the OnePulse Foundation, formed with the explicit intent to raise funds to build a Pulse memorial.
Over the years, the project hit major snags. OnePulse drew up ambitious (and outrageously expensive) plans that only ballooned with each update. The gaudy memorial and museum concepts drawn up by OnePulse — at one point reaching an estimated $100 million price tag — were opposed by a group of vocal shooting survivors, who felt that Poma was seeking to profit off their pain.
Under scrutiny over her six-figure salary as CEO of OnePulse and a lack of progress on the memorial, Poma stepped down from her leadership role in the organization in 2022, reportedly to focus on raising funds. She left the nonprofit entirely the following year. Within months, OnePulse formally dissolved itself on the last day of 2023, amid financial woes, abandoning plans for its memorial and leaving taxpayers to foot its $51,000 property tax bill.
“The OnePulse foundation took advantage of us, the victims and survivors of the shooting, and now they are taking full advantage of Orange County taxpayers,” Hernández told Orlando Weekly in a statement at the time.
Maritza Gomez, another survivor and critic of the city’s close working relationship with the Pomas, plans to attend both events — the city-organized remembrance ceremony and the ceremony that’s being organized by survivors, with assistance from Victims First. “I just wanna see the shit show they have this year,” Gomez told Orlando Weekly in a text, referring to the city ceremony.
Gomez lives locally, in Clermont. She’s not impressed with the city’s takeover of the Pulse memorial project, which is expected to break ground this summer. Since assuming responsibility for the memorial construction in late 2023, the city organized an advisory committee of those affected to come up with plans for the memorial. Still, some family members felt left out of the process.
That includes Christine Leinonen, whose 32-year-old son, Christopher “Drew” Leinonen, perished on the unpermitted dance floor of Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, alongside his boyfriend, Juan Guerrera. “I think it’s morally reprehensible that I am not on that committee,” she said, of the advisory committee process. “The whole reason you are doing a memorial is to honor my son and the other 48.”
The city took down the iconic Pulse sign earlier this year, and demolished the building itself, located just south of downtown Orlando, shortly after to make way for the memorial. City officials allowed family members, survivors and press to tour the inside of the former club last year — photos and video footage were explicitly prohibited.
Leinonen, a former police officer who later went on to advocate for gun control measures, told the Weekly she typically steers clear of Pulse anniversary events and didn’t indicate she plans to attend the upcoming ceremony organized by survivors. “I was opposed to the exploitation the city and bar owners used the day for,” Leinonen told Orlando Weekly in a text. “So I got into the habit of making 6.12 a non day. Doing odd jobs around the house.”
A good friend of her son’s, Brandon Wolf — a survivor of the shooting — told the Weekly that he’s “thrilled” to see the remembrance event is being organized, but isn’t sure yet whether he will attend himself. “I am usually a day-of decision on what I am up for doing, but either way, I am grateful to see that space come together.”
Over the last 10 years, Wolf has become a public figure in his own right, advocating for gun control and LGBTQ+ rights measures and doing communications work for Equality Florida and the Human Rights Campaign. Although Wolf has spent the last three years in Washington, D.C., as the Human Rights Campaign’s national press secretary, he recently announced he will be returning to Florida — Orlando, specifically — to resume his role with Equality Florida.
“As we started the new year, and we got closer, quite honestly, to the 10-year remembrance of Pulse, I think I realized I was talking to myself — that this moment requires me to be as courageous as I would ask anyone else to be,” Wolf shared in an interview with Orlando Weekly, referring to the work he did traveling the country for the Human Rights Campaign. “And the most courageous thing I could do was go back to where I am from, to go back home and fight the bullies on the front lines.”
Victims First, an organization that helped Parker before she got involved with its leadership council herself, has a tense relationship with city officials. At times, those affiliated with the organization, and the grassroots Pulse Families and Survivors for Justice, have been confrontational, directly calling out city leaders for their silence on issues such as barriers to exits at Pulse the night of the shooting, or for failing to ensure their voices were being heard during the process of developing memorial designs.
“For me, I just want survivors to have a voice. Not tell me what I mean, not tell me how I’m feeling, not telling me how I’m doing. … Survivors know what they need. What I would like to see is for survivors to just truly enjoy an event,” Parker said. “At this point, we’ve been through enough.”
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