”Some attendees felt the size and scale of the crusade was a sign that attitudes toward religion could be changing in the Pacific Northwest.”
COUNTERPOINT: it’s actually because in recent years a bunch of fascist organizations (which, yes, included plenty of neo-Nazis & literal klansmen) relentlessly targeted PDX with giant, violent rally-invasions of out-of-town bigots, which normalized exactly this kind of far right “anti-woke” gathering.