Westboro Protest Report – 1-30-2009
Westboro’s protests are a little annoying to deal with because they bounce around from place to place like crazy, only staying for about 45 minutes in each location, but we’ve kept up with them fairly well so far.
Fortunately there did not seem to be any real threat of violence from the hundreds of people gathered in front of the school, and I think it went pretty well. We brought out our speaker and let people use it to talk to the WBC since there was a barrier and some distance between us and them, and we played some music too including Never Gonna’ Give You Up, Imagine, Personal Jesus and I Kissed a Girl which a lot of the students sang along with.
Some people had a few harsh words for the WBC, particularly parents who didn’t want them at the school, but overall our side was promoting love and acceptance and having fun, not the kind of hate that the Westboro people are always spewing.
There’s still one more protest to go tonight, so I’ve gotta’ get back out there. They’re protesting at the Chyro Arts Venue in Scottsdale where a play called Closet Drama, which contains an unflattering portrayal of WBC, is being performed. I’ll post an update about how it goes later tonight.
Update:
I expected this last event of the day to be the biggest for them, especially because the play is partly about them and is sympathetic to the homosexuals they hate, but they actually didn’t stay that long. I’m not sure, but I think they stayed for less time than they did most of the other locations, and it turned out that the random high school protest was the biggest in terms of turnout and the length of time they stayed. That may have had something to do with the news cameras that were out there too though…
Still, they did show up to protest the play, so at least we didn’t go out there for nothing. I think 50-100 people were there on our side, and fortunately we ended the day without a single violent incident that I know of at any of the events. As tempting as it is to wish these people harm sometimes, I consider that a win.
I passed on the Luke Airforce Base protest today simply because they stay for such a short time and the time we spent there would have been maybe half the length of the drive. I think the airforce base can take care of itself, so we’ll see you next time Westboro.
February 1st, 2009 at 11:43 am
I think the protest at the school was the biggest because it was so widely published for some reason. Me and 3 of my Flagstaff friends heard about it and drove from here to be at the protest. It did end up being an awesome turnout though.