Juilliard students confront racist picket with music and song
mainSome sixty to a hundred Juilliard students turned out this morning to face down three envoys of the Westboro Baptist Church who denounced the school as a den of pride and vanity.
Police kept the two groups fifty feet apart.
First report and pictures here.
How about if people just completely ignored them, like they didn’t exist, like they do all the other crazy people in NYC?
It becomes a show-of-support thing. When they came to the university where I used to teach, the gay student organization let everybody know, and about a thousand people came out to show support for human decency. It was like a big party, with car horns & loud music to drown out their message and a lot more dancing & laughing than jeering/ booing.
I think in a way, they provide a public service by giving people an easy introduction to street activism. No questions of moral ambiguity or fear of getting beaten up by supporters on the other side of the issue.
It’s an age-old piece of folk wisdom that the Devil can’t stand mockery: http://tinyurl.com/j524esj
The mockery thing hasn’t slowed them down.
Attention and disruption are what they hunger for.
If everyone carried on as if they weren’t there, they’d run out of gas.
Agreed — please don’t feed the trolls…
Is there any people group that they DO like, except themselves???
The story goes that when pastor Phelps of Wesboro died he reached the pearly gates when St. Peter greeted him with,” Ooooo hello duckie, you just come in, the boys are dying to meet you.”
Somewhere between these demonstrations and the guy who’s dropping ashes into the Met pit – truth exists.
I wish they had brought out a bagpipe ensemble. This music is too beautiful for the bible thumpers.
“denounced the school as a den of pride and vanity.”
While withholding support for any other part of their distasteful platform, in the interest of truthfulness one would have to admit they do have a point…