Fighting fire with fire

Judy Shepard came to campus and the expected happened.

The campus got hold of a “press release” including a cocktail of hate speech, bible verses and two addresses for Judy Shepard’s discussions — one of them our very own — compiled by the Westboro Baptist Church. This started a rumor about a protest for the Shepard event, and the Internet went nuts.

Immediately, I got an invitation on Facebook to the counter-protest. The event asked students to “RSVP ‘Yes’ if they could be on ‘Standby’ to come counter-protest if they do end up on our campus!”  

I’m so pleased that I’m on a campus where we don’t accept bigotry, but we’re awfully quick to jump on the counter-protest bandwagon.

There are times and ways counter-protesting can be truly effective, but if they’re done wrong, they’re deadly.

Counter-protests can too easily get out of hand, be misconstrued and ruin the case and good name of the counter-protestors. Perhaps the most local and chilling example is Boxcar Books’s run-in with the Traditionalist Youth Network.

Back in late August the group was protesting the local bookstore, and many Bloomington residents decided to counter-protest. However, things got heated and the Indiana Daily Student snapped a photograph. Now the image of a counter-protestor screaming just as loud, if not louder and more in the face of a Traditional Youth member, will be attached to that story.

Sure, the counter-protestor meant all the best in the world. He was sticking up for a local book shop that was being attacked by people who chanted “Racist, fascist, anti-gay, Trad Youth Network here to stay” as they walked through campus.

But in this instance, the defender was misconstrued as the attacker.

Now TYN has a pretty concise, clear piece of evidence they can bring to other networks in order to justify their work and gain support. They’ve been victimized, in a way, and nothing gains sympathy points more than victimization.

The same thing happens every time our favorite preacher, Brother Jed, comes around.

At least once every visit, a student will get impassioned and start yelling things at Jed.

Again, any passerby might get confused as he or she sees a young, able college student yelling things at an old man.

If we saw this on the street without context, we’d probably jump in to the old man’s defense.

Some people are simply too far-gone to change, and counter-protesting them will never make it better.

If you want to help, work to educate against bigotry and hate speech.

Most of this campus’s counter-protesting ends up giving hate more publicity and potentially more support.

Instead of counter-protesting the Westboro Baptist Church, we should provide them with guaranteed admission to any event they might be protesting. All we can do for groups like that is give our best attempt at educating them on how they are protesting real human beings with life stories.

If they refuse it, then they’re simply programmed for bigotry.

Don’t waste your time trying to show them how to care for others. Just practice it.

­— sjostrw@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Sam Ostrowski on Twitter @ostrowski_s_j.