Burbank Assemblymember Calls for Armenian Genocide Remembrance

Assemblymember Nick Schultz is calling on residents across his district to mark April 24 as a day of active remembrance, not quiet reflection.

The date carries enormous weight. April 24, 1915, was the start of the Armenian Genocide, a systematic campaign that killed more than 1.5 million Armenians over eight years and also claimed hundreds of thousands of Assyrians, Greeks, and Christians. That’s a figure that dwarfs the population of Burbank many times over, and Schultz doesn’t want anyone in his district treating it as a footnote.

“Denying the atrocities, remaining silent, or even intentionally avoiding use of the word ‘genocide’ to describe this historical event is tantamount to complicity,” Schultz said. “Silence invites reoccurrence.”

His words carry local resonance here in Burbank, a city with one of the largest Armenian American communities in the country. Walk through any neighborhood off Glenoaks Boulevard and you’ll find families whose grandparents or great-grandparents survived that horror and built new lives in the San Fernando Valley. The community’s presence here isn’t accidental. It’s the direct result of a diaspora born from catastrophe.

Schultz, whose district office can be reached at (818) 558-3043 or [email protected], organized gatherings across the district this week in recognition of the 111th anniversary. He wants the act of remembrance understood as a civic responsibility, not a cultural courtesy. “Remembrance is not passive,” he wrote in a letter published by myBurbank. “It is an act of responsibility.”

Strong words.

Necessary ones.

He didn’t soften his criticism of those who refuse to use accurate language. Schultz pointed directly at Turkey and Azerbaijan, both of which continue to deny the genocide happened. He also called out members of the U.S. government, including President Trump, for referring to the genocide as a “great catastrophe” rather than naming it plainly.

That language gap isn’t just a semantic debate. Governments and historians who study mass atrocities, including researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, have documented how denial extends the harm of genocide by erasing accountability and discouraging survivors’ descendants from seeking justice. Words matter in ways that outlast any single political moment.

For Burbank families with Armenian roots, April 24 isn’t history in the abstract. It’s grandmothers who didn’t talk about what they saw. It’s surnames that changed at border crossings. It’s church services in Glendale and Burbank every year on this date that pack the pews. The Armenian National Institute estimates that approximately 1 to 1.5 million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923, figures drawn from Ottoman records, survivor testimony, and decades of scholarly research.

Schultz acknowledged the extraordinary resilience of the Armenian American community throughout his letter but he was careful not to let that resilience become a reason to minimize the grief behind it. Survivors carried their memories across generations and built new lives while holding onto the truth of what they endured. That’s strength. It doesn’t cancel out the scale of what was lost.

His challenge to the district went beyond the Armenian community itself. He asked all residents to consider what they’re willing to remember, acknowledge, and confront, himself included. That framing is significant. It treats historical honesty as an ongoing personal obligation rather than a box checked at an annual ceremony.

For anyone who grew up in Burbank public schools, who cheered at Burroughs or Burbank High, who ran cross country in the Verdugo Hills or played youth basketball at one of the city’s parks, you’ve almost certainly trained alongside, competed against, or become friends with kids from Armenian families. This community helped build this city. Remembering what their ancestors endured isn’t a gesture of sympathy. It’s a basic acknowledgment of the truth about people who are your neighbors.

Schultz closed with a direct statement about why collective recognition matters: the deliberate destruction of a people, anywhere, is a concern for people everywhere. That principle doesn’t belong to one faith, one ethnicity, or one political party. It belongs to everyone who believes that facts shouldn’t be abandoned when they become inconvenient, and that what happened on April 24, 1915, deserves its proper name.