Eleven people have died since Monday, Jan. 21, when a shooter made his way through Lunar New Year celebrations in Monterey Park, California. Eleven people whose families and friends are reeling from an attack in the majority Asian city in Los Angeles County. Eleven people were not just eleven people.

They were Mymy Nhan, Xiujuan Yu, Hongying Jian, Yu Lun Kao, Valentino Marcos Alvero, Wen Tau Yu, Ming Wei Ma, Diana Man Ling Tom, Muoi Dai Ung, Chia Ling Yau and Lilian Li.

It’s tempting to treat every mass shooting like just another news headline. The societal numbness that has resulted from death after death leaves little room for hope. The desensitization to gun violence is strongest when it’s distant, but the distance doesn’t mean we lack responsibility when precious lives are lost.

Perhaps the most critical thing we can do when we aren’t personally connected to a mass shooting is to seek out the humanity in the victims. We must learn their names, where they came from and how they made an impact on the earth. We must refuse to see them as just bodies, just numbers, just a reason to push legislation. By doing so, we might find we’re more personally connected than we think.

Upholding victims of gun violence as individuals with important stories requires us to also interrogate their deaths. It is no coincidence that the shooting in Monterey Park happened during the Lunar New Year. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began a new wave of anti-AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islanders) hate in 2020, there have been over 11,000 incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate as of last March. This national coalition continues gathering data from reports ranging from verbal harassment to assault. According to the Los Angeles Times, hate crimes against Asian Americans in California specifically increased by 177.5% from 2020 to 2021.

Mass shootings are not isolated events, but this isn’t to say they should be lumped together under one category of senseless violence. To fully honor the lives lost, we need to see each tragedy as unique with specific conditions that led to it. This isn’t to intellectualize or stifle our emotions as we data-collect, but to understand the depth of grief that each family, friend and community feels.

No matter how we process what happened in Monterey Park or how we choose to act, we can’t forget the eleven people. We can’t forget Mymy Nhan, Xiujuan Yu, Hongying Jian, Yu Lun Kao, Valentino Marcos Alvero, Wen Tau Yu, Ming Wei Ma, Diana Man Ling Tom, Muoi Dai Ung, Chia Ling Yau or Lilan Li.