Holding candles and signs with such messages as “We Can’t Afford to Wait,” “Public Option Now,” and the words of Ted Kennedy, “The dream shall never die,” those who attended the vigil sang songs—Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-changing” and the chorus of “Get Together” by the Youngbloods—and listened to a litany of stories of people who had been denied medical care, turned down by Medicaid, refused health coverage, and ruined by medical debt. One woman—a minister—told of her unhappy and costly experience with the healthcare credit card CareCredit, which she used to pay an unanticipated dental bill of $1,300 for emergency root canal work.

As the vigil was winding to a close, a man came to the microphone to read a message that seemed to have been originally prepared for a church service. It made reference to the audience “gathered in a “Christian church” when in fact we were gathered in a public park, but it contained one of the more interesting observations of the current debate when it spoke of “Christians who talk about the right to life as though it ends at birth.”

At one point, vigil organizers crossed the street to Scott Murphy’s regional office, where Benedict McCaffrey and another staffer kept there own after-hours vigil, and returned with the message that “Scott Murphy is in favor of the Public Option.”

As I was leaving the vigil, I met up with Cyndy Hall, First Vice Chair of the Columbia County Democratic Committee, who was part of a small group gathered on the sidewalk outside Murphy’s office. She introduced me to her 85-year-old mother, Jean Hall, who, as a retired regional director for the Red Cross, had a “wonderful healthcare plan.” Yet, just that day, Hall’s mother had been refused coverage for a medication she needs, and that decision motivated her to join her daughter at the vigil.