LINCOLN HEIGHTS, Ohio — The jubilant prayers, soulful singing and organ-backed testimonials at Thursday evening's Voices of the Valley meeting in Lincoln Heights could have fooled unaware visitors that the service was a regular church service.
The armed men wearing bullet-proof vests walking the back walls and surrounding the building, however, dispelled that idea.
The men were part of the Lincoln Heights Watch, who've walked the streets of the village for nearly three weeks after a white supremacist rally just outside of town on Feb. 7. Tonight, they were at the Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church Wednesday to protect the meeting.
In a long, passionate sermon, Pastor J.C. Moriah summed up the feeling in the room.
"We've experienced an invasion in this community," he said.
WATCH: Armed men watch over services as faith groups find solutions to hate
Many of the people in the room were on the overpass three weeks ago as people pushed through a police line to confront the neo-Nazis who escaped in a U-Haul.
Syretha Brown was one of the people WCPO talked to that day, and she took the stage at Voices of the Valley to recruit people to the Lincoln Heights Movement.
The movement was created before the recent hate targeting, but the overpass rally and recent citation of a man accused of throwing KKK flyers around town have served as a catalyst for recruitment.
"I want to ask our community, what can you do? Tell me what you can do," she said.
Teacher Carlton Collins pointed to QR codes broadcasted on the walls and called on people to fill out circulating forms to both sign up for the movement and share the particular set of skills they could bring to Lincoln Heights to make the community more self-sufficient.
Brown worked through several ideas for groups other than the protection teams that could be needed, including phone bank operators, a governmental information and lobbying team, builders for infrastructure and more.
Simultaneously, Pastor Julius Cook reminded the audience a full boycott of Evendale businesses would begin Friday as the town undergoes an independent third-party investigation into police actions around the neo-Nazi rally.
RELATED: Evandale PD launches third-party investigation into police actions
Collins said if the Lincoln Heights Movement could be fully fleshed out, it could serve as a blueprint for how other communities respond to hate movements.
"Cincinnati, we get the opportunity to do what we do best, which is supply chain. This time, it's just the supply chain of love. The supply chain of community building, support and growth," he said.
The movement's first action after Thursday's meeting will be a clean-up and block party 2-5 p.m. at the old elementary school at 1200 Lindy Ave.
Brown said the timing for the clean-up event corresponded with the exact time the neo-Nazi group rallied three weeks earlier.
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