It was draped over a red picnic table, and messages adorned it from one blade of Riverside Park grass, across the top of the table’s surface, down to the ground on the other side. Finding real estate to write amid the blank white space, person after person picked their choice hue and responded to two simple, short words: “I am …”

“… a college professor,” one person wrote, in violet, “who can’t understand how people can hate other people.”

“… worried about my Earth,” another wrote, in red, “and my country when ignorance and hatred are mainstreamed.”

“… human,” wrote another, in purple.

A woman wearing a “no hate” sign shields her eyes from the sunlight as she looks to the bandshell at Riverside Park in Saranac Lake where on Monday evening Tri-Lakers shared their thoughts in the wake of this weekend’s deadly Charlottesville rally. (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)

This hour-long gathering in Riverside Park was a peaceful opportunity for the people of the Saranac Lake area to share their thoughts and emotions. It came in the wake of the weekend’s deadly Charlottesville rally, where members of far-right, white supremacist, neo-Nazi and other white nationalist groups convened and clashed with a crowd of protesters.

The participants in Charlottesville were protesting the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials from public spaces, specifically the Robert E. Lee statue in Emancipation Park, but the scheduled rally was canceled due to a state of emergency. Also during the weekend’s events, a car crashed into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 other people.

Two days later, here in Saranac Lake, this impromptu event was called “Stand in Solidarity with Charlottesville.” More than 70 people showed up at the park at 5 p.m. Monday to listen to their fellow community members speak.

Those who seized the opportunity ranged from millennial generation youth who told of how they stood up to prejudiced older family members, to retired community members who compared today’s current events to the protests of the ’60s, to a former Charlottesville resident, Laura Holmes, who said she was present Monday in Saranac Lake to express how proud she was of the Charlottesville people who “stood up to evil.”

And then there was Alec Friedmann, rabbi at the Lake Placid Synagogue and the son of Holocaust survivors. More than 50 minutes into this hour-long procession of random members of the crowd taking the stage to speak, Friedmann stood solo on the stage and shared something very tender: How as a “second survivor” of the Holocaust, he suffers from a different kind of trauma.

The more than 70 people in attendance at the "Stand in Solidarity with Charlottesville" event Monday evening in Riverside Park in Saranac Lake form a circle and read a prayer for peace at the end of the hour-long event. (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)

“And so the Holocaust for me is very real,” he shared. “Cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents — didn’t survive.

“And I’m proud to be able to join you here,” Friedmann added, “even though I am not happy that you are here. Because you are here because of a reaction to something very terrible. It would be nice if we didn’t have to be here and keep up the fight, keep up the spirit. We shall overcome, someday.”

Another speaker, who identified herself as Kate, shared how, as an eighth generation Adirondacker, she grew up experiencing racism just 30 miles from here. She felt it’s still too much a part of the fabric of the area to this day. But, she added, she wasn’t going to accept hateful speech and action any longer.

“Some time in the past year,” she said, “it came out maybe my great-grandfather was a member of the local Ku Klux Klan, which had a very real history in this area that is worth talking about.

“One of the things that I struggled with is ‘how do I grow up in this small community with people that I have to live with and know for the rest of my life could disagree with me, who have strong opinions, and how sometimes I have been guilty of stepping back and softening my words of letting something go by?’ And I’m standing here to say that I need to stop doing that,” she said.

A man and woman write their responses to the “I am” prompt on the larger-than-life piece of paper draped over a red picnic table in Riverside Park at the “Stand in Solidarity with Charlottesville” event in Saranac Lake hosted Monday evening. (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)

And one of the final speakers was Jason Brill of Saranac Lake. Raised Jewish, Brill said, though he is not particularly religious now, he is proud of his upbringing. And at this point in time, speaking to this crowd of nearly one hundred listeners about 48 hours removed from another American tragedy, all he wanted to relay were messages of outreach and acceptance.

“I do believe that God exists between us all, in those connections,” Brill said, “and we just have to keep building on those connections and keep building on them and building on them and preach that gospel — the gospel of love.

“Because,” he continued, “what is peace? That’s peace — loving each other. Just keep putting it out there, keep putting it out there. The more you put out there, the more will come back. And I implore you all to do the same. Because love trumps hate.”

The more than 70 people in attendance at the "Stand in Solidarity with Charlottesville" event Monday evening in Riverside Park in Saranac Lake form a circle and read a prayer for peace at the end of the hour-long event. (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)

The more than 70 people in attendance at the "Stand in Solidarity with Charlottesville" event Monday evening in Riverside Park in Saranac Lake form a circle and read a prayer for peace at the end of the hour-long event. (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)