No Show -- 22 October 2005
Last night, the local highschool drama group staged a performance of The Laramie Project. This is a play about the funeral of Mathew Shepard, an openly gay boy who was murdered 7 years ago. This funeral was picketed by a group led by Fred Phelps, which calles itself "The Westboro Baptist Church". You can read a story from last week in our local paper for background. The shortest version of the story is Phelps and his group didn't show up. In fact, they phoned the police and the school office earlier in the day to inform them that they wouldn't. Apparently, they had bigger fish to fry: a military funeral for a soldier killed in Iraq. They protest at these with signs that say, "God Hates America." Just in case there was any real question whether this is a red state vs blue state issue. These people just like to be hated, as far as I can tell. There is a better, more subtle version of the story. Standing outside in the heavy cold rain, I learned quite a bit about the town I live in. I learned about the Newton police. They cruised the school regularly all afternoon and showed up in force starting about 5pm.
I talked at some length with several of the police. Of course, they wanted to know who I was and why was I there.
I was very honest with them about this. I told them that I live in Newton, have children in the Newton Schools, am a professional photographer but it's not my day job at all, that I love photography, and was hoping to be able to get some pictures that would tell an interesting story.
Knowing this about me pretty much opened all doors as far as the police were concerned. Where did I live? Oh, yeah, that used to be on my beat. Did my son know your daughter? And, BTW, is that the new Canon 5D?
Knowing this about me pretty much opened all doors as far as the police were concerned. Where did I live? Oh, yeah, that used to be on my beat. Did my son know your daughter? And, BTW, is that the new Canon 5D?
At Newton South High School, there is a chapter of a student group called "The Gay/Straight Alliance", GSA. I knew about this group, but never gave them much thought. But about half a dozen of them showed up about when the police did, were let into the school and made hundreds of yellow ribbons, which are a symbol of tolerance in the play. As people started to show up for the play, the GSA members stood at the entrance and offered them these ribbons, which were pretty much universally accepted.
The local press did show up modest way. This man is Tom Mountain, a columnist for The Newton Tab and about as far toward the right as it gets in Newton, especially on the issue of school support of alternative sexual orientations and public education in gereral. Google "Tom Mountain Newton TAB" if you are interested in finding out what he thinks.
The police were ready for local news TV crews; they scouted the event, at least one with a helicopter, found out Phelps wasn't coming, and then didn't come themselves. There was a stringer from Getty Images, though.
Barney Frank is our congressman (says a lot about us right there, eh?) He turned up.
In fact, he was the only person I saw decline a yellow ribbon. He sayed he didn't need to wear one; that he'd been wearing one for the last 10 years, which I suppose is more than true in a metaphorical but important way.
I came away pretty proud of my community. The police were great. If Phelp's group had shown up, they would have been relegated to a police enclosure in the dark and rain across the street from the high school, within sight of the entrance, but not really within earshot. 20 of Newton's 150 police were present, and they had contingency plans to be able to draw many more from neighboring communities. The police were professional, true, but they were also members of the community. More than once they offered help to the GSA kids, let them into the locked building, treated them the way responsible and friendly adults treat the good kids who live in their neighborhood. This was very different from my Vietnam war era memories of NYC police (but remember I was an angry adolescent at the time.)