Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich says he was disappointed in the actions of some who attended the Martin Luther King rally in Spokane on Monday.
Among the speakers at the event were congressional candidates, Democrat Lisa Brown, and her challenger, incumbent Republican congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
McMorris Rodgers began her address by giving her opinions on President Trumps comments on accepting immigrants from Africa. While initially the crowd cheered when she criticized profanity and divisiveness, many turned on her later in her speech, and began to boo her.
Sheriff Knezovich said he felt the crowd’s actions were inappropriate, given that the event was to celebrate a peacemaker.
“He was a man of peace, a man of God. His message was trying unite America. Yesterday at the MLK march we saw everything but. We saw one part of America booing another political faction,” the sheriff says.
Knezovitch says he worries when he hears inflammatory rhetoric from both the right and left, and feels those in the middle should speak out:
“And you have revolutionaries looking for a fight, we are in big trouble, and we have to think about what is going on. And I’ll tell you what, all of us in the middle here, all of us who are going this is pretty ridiculous. You might want to start speaking up, you might want to start getting engaged,” says Knezovich.
At one point in the event, organizers chastised those who were booing, saying they should make their feelings known at the polls, rather than at an event to celebrate diversity.
