Area residents have been invited to participate in a unity march Sunday, an event aimed at promoting peace in response to recent national news of violence and division.
The campaign for Kaitlyn Beck, who is running for the 49th Legislative District House seat, Position 1, organized the march with Black Lives Matter Vancouver after a series of events they said they had found troubling.
The first occurred on Sept. 16, when police in Tulsa, Okla., shot and killed Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old black man. Then, a few days later, a similar incident in which police shot and killed Keith L. Scott in Charlotte, N.C., sparked multiple days of riots.
Around the same time, Beck’s campaign manager, James Tolson, got word of an upcoming rally in Vancouver in support of Donald Trump. The overall message of that campaign, Tolson said, is divisive.
“Part of why it’s so easy to divide us is that we don’t understand where people are coming from,” Tolson said. “We want to invite people to come out and take in different perspectives, to take a stand against bigotry and hatred and overall divisiveness.”
The event starts at 2:30 p.m. at Marshall Park. Participants will march on the sidewalks to the Vancouver Community Library and back to Marshall Park. Tolson expects more than 500 people to attend; participating groups include the LGBT community and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
“It just feels like these demographics are not getting the attention they need — they’re not getting their issues highlighted by local candidates,” Tolson said. “It is about peace and understanding each other and understanding we all have similar obstacles. If we come together, we can fix those things.”
The unity march will be held at about the same time as the Trump rally, set to start at 2 p.m. Sunday in Esther Short Park.
Joey Gibson, organizer of the Trump rally, said that he disagrees that Trump’s campaign is divisive but rather the division is created by the political climate. Gibson said he especially feels it when he gets backlash for publicly supporting Trump.
“People can make it as divisive as they want,” he said. “My goal is to get a smaller government, and that’s why I stand with Trump, and that’s what this rally is about.”
