STROUDSBURG, MONROE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — Vigils for the late political activist Charlie Kirk have been popping up worldwide since his assassination last week, including a few in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
28/22 News Reporter Avery Nape was in Stroudsburg on Wednesday night for a service that brought out hundreds of people to celebrate and memorialize his life.
The voice of the late Charlie Kirk reached far beyond party lines both nationally and around the globe, and the impact his messages had is no different here in NEPA.
Hundreds filled Courthouse Square in Downtown Stroudsburg on Wednesday to remember the late Charlie Kirk.
People, young and old, gathered to keep both his memory and his message alive.
"He reached out to the young people, and the young people are going to be our leaders someday," Stroudsburg resident David Bryant told 28/22 News.
"The youth is the future, and we need to stand up, and we need to shape the future politically because we're, we're the next presidents," Shane Burkhart from Snydersville said.
Prayers were read, songs were sung, and a table, representing Kirk's typical set-up for an on-campus debate, was there for all to see.
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His death is still fresh in the minds of many, if not all, who were there, even before the candles were lit.
"Hearing that that happened, I was genuinely heartbroken, and not as a conservative being heartbroken, just as a human that, how, are people celebrating this?" Gouldsboro resident Robert Canova explained.
One woman, 28/22 News spoke with, admits the internet is rife with commentators sharing divisive messaging.
"You see all these Republican or Democrat speakers online like Ben Shapiro, people like that, who do it more, like, it separates people more, I feel like," Cheyenne Moyer from Long Pond stated.
But to her and many others at the vigil, Kirk was not one of them.
"Charlie, he went onto these campuses to inform and to have healthy debates and give people their voices," Moyer continued.
Debates and voices that many feel are the only way to ease the growing political divide in America, a divide that has led to violence and the loss of a voice many at the vigil grew to love.
"We can come through this, we can be stronger, we can be better as a nation," Bryant added.
Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, the message that vigils like this one send is clear: there's no place in America for political violence.
