Plainfield Hosts Candlelight Vigil to Honor Victims of Charlottesville

As I noted on my city council blog the other day ("Charlottesville...and the #KlanPresident"), this past week's events have highlighted the continuing moral failures of many in our nation--exemplified in the words of the disgraceful Donald Trump--who has decided that it is "okay" to equate the counter-protests of the Black Lives Matter activists and other anti-racist groups with the KKK, neo-Nazis, and the other white supremacist individuals and groups who injured and murdered American citizens in the name of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. We, as a community, need to come together and, in one voice, denounce such hatred. To that end, please join family, friends, elected officials, and clergy on Monday, August 21, 2017, at a candlelight vigil in Plainfield to honor the victims of the racist violence that occurred in Charlottesville, VA last week. The city's event will take place at 7:30 pm on the steps of Plainfield City Hall. It is important that we as a city stand together against those who want to normalize and fan the flames of racial hatred. Donald Trump is dedicated to creating a moral equivalency between those fighting racism and those who revel in its gory violence. We must say ‘NO’ to such evil. 

Rev. Hodari Hamilton, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Plainfield, will be the keynote speaker. Before moving to New Jersey to lead Shiloh, Reverend Hamilton was the pastor of the First Baptist Church, the oldest African American church in Charlottesville, where a major focus was (and remains) social justice. Rev. Ann Marie Alderman from the First Unitarian Society of Plainfield, Freedom Ministries' Pastor Antione Hart, Rev. Dámaris E. Ortega of United Church of Christ Congregational, and Pastor Carl Brewer of Metropolitan Seventh-Day Adventist Church will offer prayers. Councilman Barry Goode, who is also an ordained minister, will deliver the invocation and other community leaders will offer remarks. The entire Plainfield community is invited to stand in solidarity in remembrance of the victims and in commitment to unity. Parking is available in the lot behind the city hall building. Let us come together.

WE WILL NOT LET HATE WIN.