PORT ANGELES — Gatherings are planned today and Saturday in Port Angeles and Sequim to remember last week’s victims of religious and racial hatred — and condemn those who perpetrate acts of violence.
Silent candlelight vigils are set from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. today in Port Angeles at First and Lincoln streets, organized by Clallam Democrats, and from 5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. today at the corner of Sequim and Washington streets, organized by Indivisible Sequim.
Participants are being asked to not bring signs.
An hourlong service and vigil organized by Interfaith Community in Clallam County will be from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 301 E. Lopez Ave., Port Angeles.
Eleven Jewish worshippers were killed last Saturday in Pittsburgh, Pa., by a lone gunman who burst into the Tree of Life Synagogue during Sabbath services, yelling “All Jews must die!” police said.
An African-American man and African-American woman were killed Oct. 24 by a white man at a Kroger grocery store in the Louisville, Ky., suburb of Jeffersontown after unsuccessfully trying, minutes earlier, to enter a predominantly black church that was locked, police said. The man was arrested nearby.
“The killers made themselves heard and seen and they hurt many people,” Kristin-Luana Baumann, co-pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and an Interfaith Community organizer, said Thursday.
“We want people to know there are many more people in this county of good will.
“We want to give people the opportunity to be comforted and to heal.
“We condemn all racists and religious violence altogether.
“We can all work together for the greater good.”
Baumann will join Suzanne DeBey, a Jewish community lay leader and a founder of Congregation Olympic B’nai Shalom in Port Angeles, in leading the service at Holy Trinity, Baumann said.
“I will just be reflecting on the thousands of years, you know, that this has been going on, and every time we think we are in a place where we are free to worship freely, and we think we can relax, it happens again to the Jewish people,” DeBey said Thursday.
DeBey, a monthly contributor to the Peninsula Daily News’ weekly Issues of Faith column, talked of “constantly looking over your shoulder” as a potential target of violence.
Whenever she sets up for congregation services, “I don’t dwell on it, but it crosses my mind,” she said.
She recalled that Saturday, after learning of the Pittsburgh shooting, her son, daughter-in-law and grandson were on their way to Sabbath services in Seattle.
“I almost hyperventilated, I wanted to say, ‘don’t go, don’t go,’ ” DeBey said.
“I’m trying to deal with all these thoughts.”
At the same time, DeBey is overwhelmed by people from across the country who have called her with support and others who have attended vigils, “marching and saying, ‘this can’t happen anymore,’ ” she said.
“I’m angry, upset and devastated, but at the same time, we have to talk about it and use it to go out and change the world,” DeBey said, urging that people empathize with others of different religions and ethnicities who are demonized.
Also speaking at Holy Trinity will be Baumann’s husband, Holy Trinity co-pastor Olaf Baumann; Tara Martin Lopez, sociology professor at Peninsula College; Gail Wheatley, priest at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Port Angeles; Tom Steffen, minister and pastor of First United Methodist Church in Port Angeles, and Russ Britton, pastor of Dungeness Valley Lutheran Church in Sequim.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@ peninsuladailynews.com.
