“Who stands with Charleston? Seattle stands with Charleston” (Images: Alex Garland for CHS)

1,000 rallied and marched Tuesday night from 14th Ave’s First AME Church to Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Park in solidarity with the Charleston 9.

Organized by the Seattle King County NAACP and the United Black Christian Clergy, the three-mile march from Capitol Hill through the Central District came as communities across the country continue to react to the June murders at the South Carolina Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. In South Carolina, lawmakers are debating the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the Capitol. Elsewhere, states are grappling with the elimination of monuments, symbols, and even city names with a Confederate history. Locally, a Confederate memorial in Capitol Hill’s Lake View Cemetery was targeted with a message against “white supremacy” over the weekend.

Tuesday’s rally and march was mostly about healing and growing the Black Lives Matter movement against racism and ongoing inequity issues like police violence. The march ended in MLK Jr. Park with the group holding hands and singing about love.

More pictures, below.