Protest Easy Guns

I had my day all planned out today. I was going to stay home, do laundry, and wash dishes. Maybe make some home-made granola. But when I was in the shower this morning, WHYY mentioned something about an anti-gun protest today on Independence Mall. I looked up the details online, grabbed my camera, and headed downtown.

The protest was by a group called ProtestEasyGuns.com (their name is their address), largely in response to the shootings at Virginia Tech.

It was a smaller group than I'd hoped, but it was a Sunday, and the weather forecast called for thunderstorms today, and it was already raining a little bit by the time the protest started. At least there were a couple of tv filming crews there (one from Fox29, and I'm not sure about the other one), plus a reporter from KYW1060 News Radio.

There were about 32 protesters (plus maybe an extra supporter or two)--mostly women-- dressed in black with "Outrage ribbons" in Virginia Tech's school colors, maroon and orange. I believe I heard someone say that the scarves were made by a mother who lost a child at Virginia Tech, but I can't be sure. Leading up to noon, they handed out flyers titled, "Did you know that in Pennsylvania" to passers-by, listing some disturbing facts about buying guns in PA (There is no waiting period to buy a gun. No training is required to obtain a permit for carrying a concealed weapon. You are not required to report a lost or stolen gun to police.) and giving information on contacting legislators, and on organizing your own protest.

At noon, the group formed into 2 lines. Hope Bennett, one of the organizers of the protest, read a short speech explaining what the event was about. She summed up her own involvement by explaining: "I have sat at home and expressed my outrage to my family and myself. After the Virginia Tech incident, we can no longer stay on the sidelines. Enough is enough; it's time to try something else."

She also made a good point when repeating the arguments made by the gun-lobby: "Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Absolutely, so we invite the gun lobby to stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the fight to keep guns out of the hands of those people."

The 32 people (symbolizing the 32 victims at Virginia Tech and the 32 people who die every day in this country from gun violence) then lay down on the sidewalk for a few minutes, symbolizing the amount of time it took for the VA Tech shooter to obtain his gun.

Afterward, I talked briefly with Hope Bennett. She'd been hard to hear over the Market Street traffic, so she kindly gave me a copy of her speech.

May 13 MOVE Protest

As anyone who was alive in Philadelphia in 1985 knows, on May 13 of that year, the city's police department dropped a bomb on the roof of the MOVE house, in advertently igniting containers of kerosene, and subsequently burning down an entire block of 62 houses and killing 11 of the 13 people who were inside the MOVE house. I remember watching it on TV when it happened, even though I was only 13 at the time. It remains a divisive issue in the city, with people taking sides either with the police or with MOVE. Today is the 22nd anniversary of that event.

Every year the survivors, other MOVE members, and their supporters stage a protest. These photos come from the event at Broad and Walnut Streets. An angry young man was shouting through a megaphone to anyone who would listen about the evil system of government we all live with. Most people seemed to ignore what was going on, although I saw a few people stop and take literature from the protesters.





This man, along with a few others at each of the four street corners at Broad and Walnut, was handing out literature about Mumia Abu Jamal, another issue which MOVE has associated itself with. I talked with him for a few minutes, during which time a passing pedestrian shouted "Cop killer!" as he passed. The man responded with a quick "Fuck you!" before resuming his conversation with me:





Another man approached me while I was taking photographs and stared at me in an unfriendly and highly suspicious way. I finally said, "hi there," and he asked me who I was taking photos for. And I told him about Philly Happening.
"Are you sure it's not for a guy named Tony Allen?" he asked.
"Who's Tony Allen? Some guy who doesn't like you?" I responded
"You seem to know all about that then," he said, as if confirming his suspicions.
"No, you just seemed really suspicious about him, so I assume he's not your biggest fan."
I don't think he believed me, but he dropped the subject and we talked for a few minutes more before I moved on.

[update: I looked up Tony Allen, and indeed, he is no fan of MOVE. He runs the "Anti-MOVE/Mumia Blog" Like I said: highly divisive.]

Protesters at Equality Forum 2006

I just got home from a fantastic day at "Sunday Out," the street-festival portion of Equality Forum. I ran into a few old friends I haven't seen in ages, met some interesting new people, saw a bunch of cute boys, talked with the protesters, and took about 350 photographs.


I do not like the protesters, Sam-I-Am. One day, I hope we'll look back at these photos of these hateful signs and feel the same way about them that we feel now when we look back at photographs of signs that say "Whites Only." They have no business coming to our events and disrupting them with their hateful messages. The come in the guise of people who love us, who simply want to save our souls. But all they ever do is tell us that we're "abominations," that we're evil, that we're going to hell. I've grown somewhat accustomed to their presence at gay events, and that bothers me most of all. Can you imagine a black pride rally, and the Klan showing up, and all the black people there just quietly accepting their presence???

I don't mind if they're simply present, quietly handing out pamphlets. And that's what a few are doing, but the main group of protesters walks around carrying large signs containing offensive, anti-gay language, and preaching loudly through a megaphone. It may be legal, but it is rude and it is immoral, and it is wrong.

Here are the loudest:

Michael Marcavage:

Michael is with "Repent America". Several years ago when he was still a student at Temple University, he was involuntarily committed to a state mental hospital after some sort of Christian protest he was involved in on campus. Why they let him out of the hospital, we'll never know. Today, he believes that the government should "uphold God's law" by rounding up gay people and killing them.

Jason Storm:




I don't know what ministry Jason is from, but then: who cares? The thing you probably notice right away about Jason Storm is that he's smoking hot. I mean, I never like goatees, but I'd totally do Jason Storm. You can see above the photo where he's looking right at me. I'm hoping that's lust in his eyes. Jason came to Penn's campus a year or two ago, and I was somewhat impressed with him. He can be charismatic at times. And on a college campus, I have no problem with him. The problem at gay events is that it's hard to take him seriously when he's doing is gosh-darned best to ruin the day of everyone else present. And he says awful things. For example he quotes the high suicide rate among gay teens as evidence that there's something fundamentally (no pun intended) wrong with them, rather than as evidence that so many impressionable gay teens internalize the horrible, hate-filled message that we are evil abominations who don't deserve to live. I completely lost my temper at him last year at the same event and screamed back at him before I even realized I'd opened my mouth. Also, did I mention that I'd do him?

Some other protesters worthy of special mention:

Denny and Merv:














Denny (left) was standing at 5th and Market, quietly handing out religious tracts. Ironically (and I told him this, too), I came *SO* close to wearing that same shirt that he was wearing today! Thank god I went with the green polo shirt instead, right? Anyway, I spoke with him for a while, and I was impressed with his non-confrontational style. He and Merv come from a ministry in Virginia. I later learned that Denny has 10 people (or is it 10 children?) in his family. Apparently they mostly live on donations that come in from around the country. I spoke with Merv, too. He's originally from around Reading, PA, apparently, but I forget where he says he moved to. Both were extremely nice, and neither was from the same ministry as Michael Marcavage or Jason Storm above, although they were familiar with both. Denny said they'll probably hand out 4000-5000 tracts today. And I know from experience that they have to buy those tracts--they're not free. As you may know, i collect religious tracts. I started collecting them at gay events, actually. The idea was that if *I* took a pamphlet, then that's one less that someone else could take and potentially be poisoned by.

And that's a great segue into our next specially-featured protester:

Caleb:

Hands off, boys; he's Christian. Caleb, it turns out, is Denny's son, but I didn't know that at first. Still, it explains the scraggly beginnings of a beard that Caleb is growing. The encounter started when I saw Chumley wearing an official Equality Forum staff pass and a microphone headset, rushing off down Market Street. My spidey sense tingled: Something's afoot! So I headed off after him. It quickly became apparent that he was following a guy (Caleb) who was handing out religious tracts and collecting them from the recipients. Indeed, Chumley had a stack of 10 or 15 in his hand already. I asked if I could have them, for my collection, but since he didn't know me from Adam at the time, he said no, possibly figuring me for another Christian protester. A woman followed closely behind, and I followed closely behind her. We all stopped walking when we'd gone halfway around the block, at something (4th?) & Chestnut. There the conversation began:


Chumley made it plain--much to Caleb's chagrin--that he would continue to follow him as long as he kept handing out those religious tracts at Equality Forum. Chumley was eventually called away, leaving the woman (Amena) and I with Caleb. We stood and talked on that corner for at least a half hour. It was actually a very pleasant, very interesting conversation. Obviously, Amena and I disagreed with Caleb, and we debated back and forth, each of us explaining our view of God, trying to find flaws in the other side's argument, and so on. Caleb seemed quite surprised that we even believed in God. So right there it was nice to be able to help humanize gay people to the fundamentalists who preach against us and disabuse them of the myths and misconceptions they have about us. And we learned about him--a 16 year old from a large family, who has a job framing houses, but will probably one day give that up in favor of doing outreach, and he's homeschooled (no surprise there) and he's never seen The Matrix (another big surprise), and he thinks Fred Phelps is evil (a surpise at last). And this conversation had the added benefit of occupying the time of someone who would otherwise be out trying to brainwash other gay people. We were right across the street from Xando, and I offered to buy all 3 of us a coffee if they'd like to join me (I was getting hot, plus tired of standing up for so long. It's 3 hours later now and I'm still exhausted.) They declined, alas, and the conversation continued for a bit until we all returned to the street fair. I was extremely impressed with Caleb. He's only 16, but he clearly knows what he believes, he's very familiar with the bible, and you have to admit it takes a heck of a lot of guts to go out and minister to thousands of people who basically hate you. Too bad he's so misguided.

Some other protesters:



Oh, and I love this. It happens quite a bit with these protestes. You go to take their photograph, and they hide their faces. Wow. They must be SOOOOOO proud to be doing God's work, huh?




Now, I don't want you to think that everyone at the street festival just stood quietly and ignored these dillweeds (can I say that?).

I don't know this woman, but I love her. She stood and watched the "Christian" protesters for a moment, then she went and proudly stood next to them while displaying her flyer for transgendered people who are transitioning. I gave her a hug:


This guy was walking backwards while he verbally engaged the protesters, who were themselves walking through the street fair. He was clearly angry, and justifiably so:



This guy had only two words--Sieg Heil! :


The angriest of the counter-protesters. This man was not taking shit from ANYONE, and least of all the faux-Christians who pretend to "love" us. He was just screaming at them as he accusatorially pointed his finger at them. The crowd applauded him:


Another man who yelled back:


These guys have been around for the last few "christian" protests. I'm not sure who they are, but they're great. They use their banners to hide the "Christians" from view, and they chant and shout to drown out the hateful messages the protesters are spewing.


Here's Chumley, using an air horn to drown out the voices of the protesters:


This guy made his own sign right there on the spot and proudly stood directly in front of the protesters. I think the sign speaks for itself:

And finally, the people who really DO believe that God loves us. They lined the street and guarded the front of Christ Church, where MCC was holding a religious ceremony.





Heroes, all.