Wendy Parker

After a week of sadness, anger, chaos and confusion, several hundred people gathered at East Cobb Park Thursday night to remember and pray for Charlie Kirk.

Holding up candles and singing “Amazing Grace,” as seen in the video below, the participants listened to their fellow citizens not only honor the memory of a young conservative activist, but also heard calls to rise above the rancor that has increasingly resulted in deadly political violence.

Kirk was just the latest victim, shot dead Sept. 10 while speaking at a college campus in Utah, a familiar setting for the 31-year-old leader of Turning Point USA, who relished political dialogue, especially those with differing viewpoints.

Some of those speaking at the vigil organized by Jenna Ruth Byars of the East Cobb Republican Women’s group on Facebook were young people, including a Kennesaw State University student who said that “if we don’t stop this, it could end up bad. It’s up to us.”

“This is what this night is all about,” said another speaker, as the late afternoon sun gave way to a beautiful twilight.

“Sharing the light.”

The vigil was moved twice, from the East Cobb Government Services Center and Woodlawn Square Shopping Center, as organizers did not clear the event with those venues beforehand.

In the days leading up to the vigil, sheer ugliness broke out across the political spectrum about the murder of Kirk, who was instrumental in persuading young people to vote for Donald Trump.

Several Cobb County School District employees were placed on leave, and two have since been told they’re no longer with district, for making social media posts that purportedly celebrated Kirk’s murder.

Some vile remarks came on our social media accounts at East Cobb News and those of other media outlets—some of the worst I’ve ever seen, in more than 40 years of doing journalism.

Unhinged adults, acting like third-graders, cared to rant more about what they thought about Kirk’s views than the horror of him being assassinated in cold blood, in the broad daylight of public, simply for uttering them.

When we posted a video of the vigil on one of our social channels Thursday night, a follower left this kind message: “Vomit.” This individual, according to her profile, is “trying to be better than yesterday.”

Well, tomorrow is always another day, so there’s the obligation to try a good bit harder. Yet she also got more likes than most, as did someone who lamented that such acts of violence are all worthy of vigils.

While that may be true, why aren’t those complaining about it organizing them?

Those who did for this Charlie Kirk vigil were acting on the fly. Despite the late switch to East Cobb Park Thursday afternoon, the front field quickly came aglow as the sky turned dark. Organizers said they gave out around 500 candles.

There were messages of faith from several speakers, reflecting Kirk’s profession of Christianity, and included Psalm 23.

Members of the crowd were invited to take the microphone, and one urged those in attendance to follow Kirk’s path and talk about issues openly, and with civility.

“We should be willing to have those conversations in Charlie’s name,” said Evan Draim, who said he knew Kirk while still in high school. The best way to honor Kirk, he continued, was with “patience, love and kindness.”

Other speakers disputed criticisms that Kirk held racist and divisive views, and were adamant about where they thought the blame lies.

Byars told the crowd that Kirk died fighting for the truth, that being that “the left ideology is a sickness and we are here to carry his torch.”

Arielle Kurze, an East Cobb resident, told the gathering that “his fight is our fight. I will not rest until the scourge of ideology that took him is gone.”

Yet these comments just aren’t very helpful either.

If you organize a vigil to try to cool down the tensions, why say things like this? Political figures and elected officials are the targets of all kinds of assassins, would-be and realized, for all kinds of reasons.

The man charged with killing a Democratic Minnesota legislator and her husband and injuring another lawmaker and his wife in June is accused by authorities of planning a murderous rampage that included other elected officials for reasons that are still under investigation.

The causes for this violence aren’t limited to just one “ideology.” They’re the result of increasingly intolerant ideological demands that instantly cast aspersions, if not demonize, those with other views.

I wasn’t especially familiar with Kirk, but he was a rarity in resisting that urge. He was the first guest on the podcast of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a possible Democratic candidate for president in 2028.

Many people on the left expressed emotional distress over Kirk’s murder, including Jamie Lee Curtis, who was tearful talking about it this week.

But battle lines always have to be drawn among the most politically committed, leaving most of the rest of us weary, and frankly, more than disgusted. That’s the ideology that’s destroying us right now.

The warring tribes of our current politics have no interest in tamping down any of their rhetoric. The incentives are too great—for attention on social media, and to keep their ideological bona fides up to date.

Our political leaders are a big part of the problem—never backing down, always ready to use a sledgehammer to attack the “other side,” whether it’s a Republican president or Democratic members of Congress.

They should be modeling the behavior that they want us to follow. In the vacuum, as the speaker mentioned above noted, it is up to us.

Thankfully, in East Cobb, that’s been happening. The “No Kings” rally that took place the day of the deadly Minnesota shootings went off without a hitch. Thursday’s vigil for Charlie Kirk was in the same vein.

While we’ve got a long way to go in this country to recalibrate the political temperature, in our community there are people of good will, who may disagree strongly with one another, but who are also offering a light out of this awful darkness of violence and retribution.

May we continue to follow that path.

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