Two gatherings are planned in downtown Charleston Monday night to remember the victims of two mass shootings in Texas and Ohio over the weekend.
Organizers with the gun violence prevention group Brady and the National Action Network will hold a 29-minute vigil near Marion Square at 7 p.m., one minute for each victim of the two shootings. A press release on Sunday said that Mayor John Tecklenburg and S.C. Rep. Wendell Gilliard will join for the event.
“There is much work in communities and legislatively to be done to create safe spaces. [On Monday], we ask that we start by taking 29 minutes along with people across the country. After that, we pool our strengths and work together to create answers,” the release noted.
People who can’t make it to the event are asked to take 29 minutes “wherever you are” for “prayer and silence.”
Local community leader Thomas Dixon has also organized a gathering after the conclusion of S.C. Sen. Marlon Kimpson’s town hall meeting with U.S. Sen. Cory Booker at the ILA Hall (1142 Morrison Dr.) That event is scheduled to start around 8 p.m. and will focus on pushing lawmakers to act in response, according to a press release.
Kimpson is not one of the organizers, but says he is “supportive of all efforts to organize around this issue.”
Over the course of 14 hours on Saturday and early Sunday, gunmen in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio opened fire on crowds, killing 29 people and injuring more than 50.
In El Paso, a 21-year-old man was arrested in the shooting which claimed the lives of 20. Like the Mother Emanuel killer in 2015, the man appears to have written about fears that white people were in danger of being outnumbered in the United States.
In Ohio, a 24-year-old is suspected to be the man who killed nine others, including his sister, before being killed by police.
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