Dozens gathered as a part of the nation wide Mennonite Action peace demonstrations Tuesday

HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) - Tuesday, Mennonites across the United States and Canada participated in peace demonstrations calling on lawmakers to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Harrisonburg was a part of the many groups across the country that participated in this demonstration as a part of the Mennonite Action movement.

“We would like to shine a light in our local community but also throughout the United States about what is happening, about the fact that our government is funding the war that is happening in Gaza,” Emily Hershberger, the event organizer said.

More than 100 Mennonites and residents of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County gathered Tuesday to call for a ceasefire.

“Nearly 20,000 civilians have been killed, 7,000 of them are children, 50,000 people have been injured,” Hershberger said. “We just feel like a ceasefire is the only way to release hostages, to stop the killing of civilians.”

These demonstrations happened outside of U.S. Representative Ben Cline’s office in downtown Harrisonburg.

“We would like to share our convictions, our convictions that are rooted in our faith that the United States has a very very significant role to play in deescalating and we’d like to ask him as our representative to take that message to Washington and sign on to ceasefire legislation,” Hershberger said.

For more than an hour songs, prayers and testimony came from the crowd.

A handful made their way inside to talk with those in Representative Cline’s office.

“A lot of us in the Mennonite community have friends and family who are in the Middle East and so we stand with them, we have a lot of people in our own communities who are from Palestine or who have connections in Palestine and Israel and so we want to stand with them and support them,” Hershberger said.