Genevans respond to Charlottesville event with proclamation, vigil
About 160 people prayed and sang for peace and justice Monday night in downtown Geneva, in response to the deadly violence at a political protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.
"People have been dying from hate since the beginning of Genesis," organizer Jeannie Scown told the crowd, assembled in a vacant lot on the 100 block of South Third Street.
She asked for a moment of silence for all the people in the world who have died as a result of hatred.
"This is bigger and more better than I ever expected it to be," Scown said.
She said the vigil is similar to the ones she participates in every Tuesday with Indivisible Illinois at the local office of Congressman Randy Hultgren.
Scown decided Sunday to have the downtown vigil and advertised it on about two dozen Facebook pages. Thirty-eight people signed up.
Members of the crowd held signs with phrases such as "Love Not Fear Makes America Great" and "Haters, crawl back into your holes."
Earlier in the day, Geneva Mayor Kevin Burns ordered the city's flag to be flown at half-staff through Aug. 20, in memory of the counter-demonstrator killed at a white-supremacy rally, as well as the Virginia State Police troopers who died in a helicopter crash while working the event.
"Sometimes the greatest struggle in responding to tragedy is deciding what to do, how to react and what words to share with those who have been irrevocably impacted," Burns wrote in his proclamation.
"The tragedy in Charlottesville, Va. moved me in such a profound way that simply being disgusted and upset seemed insufficient."
Lowering the flag, he said, would "send a message that the City of Geneva rejects bigotry and hatred in all its forms and unambiguously denounce the evil perpetrated by white supremacists groups, neo-Nazi's and the like."
According to posts on the Fox Valley chapter page of Illinois Indivisible, a vigil was to be held Monday night in downtown Naperville, and in Bull Valley.