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For about two and a half hours on Friday afternoon, 21 chairs sat unoccupied and unmarked in the middle of Courthouse Square.
The chairs represented the 19 students and two teachers who were killed on Tuesday, May 24 when a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, a town of roughly 15,000 near the Texas-Mexico border.
“My goal, ultimately, is…to just set up and let the chairs do the talking,” said Joey Nava, a Redwood City resident who arranged the display.
“There’s 21 empty chairs that were previously occupied by teachers who loved teaching and beautiful children who were eager to learn, who were going to go ahead and set off and conquer the world,” he said. “They had dreams and aspirations, and all of that was cut short…It’s a very scary feeling that at any given time, this could happen to one of our own kids.”
Nava, who describes himself as “an advocate,” said the idea originated from a photo of a similar memorial that he saw floating around online. An uncle to young children himself, he was moved by the starkness of the empty chairs and decided to bring the display to his own community. He reached out to some friends at the Garfield School and, within a day, he had everything he needed.
He arranged the chairs in a wide semicircle across the square and sat down to observe.
The response wasn’t quite what he expected. Some passersby thought the chairs were staged for a graduation ceremony. Others posed in front of them to take selfies or simply walked by, unnoticing. Nava said the photo he later posted on social media got more attention than the actual installation.
“That was kind of disheartening,” he said, his voice heavy.
Not wanting to let Tuesday’s tragic events too quickly slip from the public consciousness, he’s determined to continue raising awareness. He’s in the process of painting names on the chairs, which he hopes to turn into a sort of “mobile memorial” that he can set up at different locations around the city—including in front of city hall.
His first stop? Courthouse Square. Nava is planning to reassemble the chairs in the plaza around 11 a.m. on Tuesday, May 31.
“We haven’t moved on,” he said, adding that he wants to see people taking action to demand stricter gun regulations. “This is still an ongoing problem, and it needs to be addressed. And hopefully with them seeing the empty chairs, it will hit home.”
For Nava, a personal trainer by trade, this wasn’t his first foray into first public art. After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, he took to downtown Redwood City, holding a hand-painted sign of Floyd. Both had tape over their mouths.
His motivation, he said, continues to be about raising awareness about injustice—and keeping the victims close in mind.
“They shouldn't be forgotten,” he said. “They lost their lives to gun violence. They lost their lives to police brutality. And this still exists, you know? We can do something about it.”
