Citizens gather to protest against violence

On Sunday evening in downtown Cathlamet, a group of citizens gathered in front of the Wahkiakum County Courthouse to peacefully protest Saturday's bigotry and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. They sang some songs and had a minute of silence for the people who had lost their lives that day.

Here are some of their thoughts:

"I'm really pleased with the turnout," Ursula Petralia, who organized the event, said. "We just want to live in peace with each other. I think that all of us want to live peaceful lives, have jobs, health care, decent education for the kids, and live in peace with each other and other countries."

"It's a distraction about who has the real power," Rick Beck said. "It's about trying to accumulate and solidify their power. Trump didn't say very much about this, he's kind of cultivated it all along and egged these people on. I think there is a real reason for that."

"I did debate for two years," Bonnie Ellis said. "You learn a lot about the ways people can make an argument without really making an argument. I see it online all the time, they are making arguments about what they think liberals, or antifas, or members of the LGBT, or muslims, about what they think they believe and it's not even remotely close. It's a generalization about it and they are trying to argue against that. You're not doing a very fair job of trying to understand what conflicting viewpoints actually are and that's pretty dangerous."

"As a Christian pastor, I believe that God in the very beginning created man and woman, and the bible says he created them in his own image," Mark Phillips said. "At the beginning there were two. And at the end, in the book of Revelation, there is this beautiful picture of people surrounding the throne and it says they are from every tribe, every language, every race, every nation. God's plan was diversity from the very beginning."