Kurt Gies of Oakland told VoxPopuli that he came out for “a young man who, on a leap of faith, went out and spread his word. And for some reason … words have become bad. And I’m like really? It’s come to this? Hopefully, we can learn as a county how to grow in this and not further divide.”

Gies is optimistic. “I think emotions are a little raw on both sides right now, but in time we will understand that though the message may not be agreeable to some, it’s just words. If we stop talking … that’s when problems happen. I think we can come together because there are radicals on each end, but there’s a strong 80 percent in the middle who have very few differences. We just gotta figure out how.”

Jeremiah Bradford came to the prayer vigil with his wife Rebecca and their son Dominic Gaudious, a senior at West Orange High School. All three wore the white Freedom T-shirts with matching American flag sneakers. Bradford said they watched Kirk “all the time,” and were there to “support Charlie and his mission.”

“It’s really unfortunate what happened, especially as so many have seen it now” he said, referring to the video of Kirk’s death. “I think it’s just important to continue to have dialogue. I would like to see people with differing opinions continue to talk about why they have that opinion and potentially change their mind and then also lead more people to Jesus.”

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Organized by itinerant evangelists Chris and Amanda Mikkelson of Winter Garden, the prayer vigil included clergy from Glad Tidings Church, Nations Church, Lakeside Church, River Clermont, Kingdom Culture and Northwest Church. About 500 people responded to the Facebook event Mikkelson organized for the vigil. He later guesstimated that the event had drawn 1,500 to 2,000 people.

City manager Jon Williams told VoxPopuli in an email that the city was not a sponsor of the prayer vigil. Winter Garden Police had seven officers at the event — on the ground as well as sharp-shooters on the roof of City Hall and a drone patrolling the sky — as a protective measure for the outdoor event. Mikkelson told VoxPopuli via text that his ministry is responsible for paying for the police protection.

Mikkleson began the vigil with a welcome and word of thanks to everyone assembled.

“I think this is a time for everybody to come together right now and celebrate and honor a great man of God and lift up the name of Jesus,” he told the crowd. “I think we're stronger together … I think we all kind of were grieving and stuff individually, and to be here together like this just says a lot.”

Mikkelson spoke about what Kirk had supposedly said he wanted his legacy to be.

“He said, I wanna be known as a man of courage, courage for my faith. That's really why we're here tonight. We're here because of a man who had great courage for his faith, and he lost his life for his faith. And tonight I hope that we can be people who rise up with courage like Charlie, courage for our faith in Jesus. And then we could spread the same message of Jesus that Charlie preached everywhere he went on all of those school campuses.”

[Editor’s note: When asked why he killed Kirk, the shooter said that Kirk “spreads too much hate.” A 2017 New Yorker profile of Turning Point USA covered alleged racial bias within the organization. NBC reported yesterday that many Black pastors in the African American Christian churches were connecting the lionization of Kirk, who they said made statements denigrating Black people, women, LGBTQ+, Muslims and immigrants, “to the history of weaponizing faith to justify colonialism, enslavement and bigotry.” NBC reported Rev. Jacqui Lewis, pastor of Middle Collegiate Church in New York City, describing this as  “white nationalism wrapped in talk of Jesus.”]

Christy Reynolds, co-owner of the Winter Garden boutique Doxology, and Melanie Peach together provided sign language interpretation for the event.

“It’s important for accessibility because we don’t know if there are going to be members of the deaf community [here], and we wanted them to be privy to the information as well,” Reynolds told VoxPopuli.

Reynolds said she was also there to register her support of free speech. “I believe we all have freedom of speech, but we don’t have freedom from consequences when we choose to use our freedom of speech,” she explained. “We’re not always gonna agree and it’s okay to disagree, but respectfully with one another. That’s what America is about.”

Winter Garden-based community advocate and co-CEO of Stars and Stripes Marketing Services Austin Arthur talked about what he said was “the truth of Charlie Kirk” before offering a moment of silence.

“ There's so much online right now, a lot of stuff against Charlie Kirk, a lot of evil that is going against him, little snippets they pull out, they misquote him,” Arthur told the crowd, his 11-year-old daughter Chrissy by his side.

“If you look at the full version of the videos and you listen to his actual words, this was an amazing man … He loved people of all faiths, of all colors, of all ethnicities,” Arthur continued. “Even if there's people in this crowd that disagree with some of his politics, it doesn't matter because he loved you the way that his savior, that my savior, I hope your savior, Jesus Christ, love[d] you.”

Arthur went on to say, “We have got to grapple with the fact that the Devil is real and that there are just darknesses among us that will kill, steal and destroy.”

Erin Huntley, chair of the Orange County GOP and candidate for House District 45, called Kirk a “Christian martyr, killed for his beliefs in faith.”

She described her family’s grief on hearing of Kirk’s murder and how her teenage sons and their friends had all been exposed to Kirk’s ideas.

“When we wake up, each of us has a choice. We can be disgusted by what is happening in our country, the land that we all love, or we can be part of the solution to change our country and make it better for generations to come,” Huntley said. “That's my personal why, my husband, our family as well. We refuse to be part of a generation for the first time in American history to hand a country to our children that has less opportunities than the one that was given to us by our parents. So we refuse to be part of that. So we are here to change.

 “Charlie so famously went to where all of you are. He went to communities, he went to churches, he went to college campuses, he went to everywhere, all onto the earth, even to the edge of North Korea to preach the gospel. So don't let today coming here be the last act that you do to remember Charlie. Let it be the first.”