Editor,
I have come to the conclusion, after attending last night’s demonstration against Milo Y., that we are going about our protests the wrong way. Let me explain.
This latest (but not new by any means) wave of bigotry in our society, fueled by social media and political rhetoric which serves only to legitimize it, has me, like so many other people in this nation, at a moral and ethical impasse with colleagues, compatriots and even family members.
When I am work - at a job I need and love - I have to remain silent while people I once respected and now question in terms of their fundamental morality and humanity cheer and high five each other as our new, clearly mentally impaired POTUS enacts incomprehensibly inhumane and immoral executive orders. I don’t leave my office much.
When I found out that our own students had chosen to provide a hate monger a platform here, at an institution I have given nearly half of my entire life and most of my adult life to, I had to come out and stand in solidarity with my fellow protesters - not against UNM’s acting president for allowing the event to occur, but against hatred and cruelty, and as a challenge to this moral failing and lack of compassion of the College Republicans.
However, as we picketed the line of attendees, it seemed that all we accomplished with our loud and colorful condemnations, was to strengthen their resolve and false righteousness.
Later, with a large group at the south entrance of the SUB, as I chanted along, I realized the only people we were actually talking to were the police officers standing guard at the doors.
Milo was safely ensconced with his throngs of supporters and the College Republicans far away from our cries, the beat of our drums and our bull horns. If anything we helped him sell more books.
The only other witnesses to the protests were the media who just wanted to get a good shot of anything they could call violence to put on the news or write about.
We were yelling into the wind and today I keep thinking to myself, why? Is it just to vent and blow off steam? Who were we trying to debate or confront? Did we succeed in changing one mind or making one soul look within at her/his own heart?
As I was leaving, I spotted a sign held by a young woman standing with a quiet group of friends and it read, “I will never stop fighting for COMPASSION.”
I ask you, my fellow people of conscience, to envision all of us from Friday night standing as one, in complete and total silence with no signs or noise or anything other than the pure power of presence - simply bearing witness, refusing to engage verbally and forcing the people we are actually trying to reach to confront not us, but themselves.
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Consider how unnerving that would be - to be on the receiving end of such a protest; how eerie in its silence - hundreds upon hundreds of people just standing there, staring you down. Imagine how powerless anyone would be to stop us or force us to disperse.
Had we done that last night, those people inside the SUB might have been forced either to walk past us or wait until midnight or later to go home.
Had we done that, perhaps a few would not have gone in at all.
I guess I’m arguing here that there are two kinds of silence; one, the kind I have to live with every day that rips at my guts and makes me feel dirty and another kind, an extremely powerful kind of silence with presence and intent that can possibly move mountains, shake souls and change our world.
I propose to all of the leaders of our activist community to, the next time we are called to stand together, which in all likelihood will be very soon, we try the strategy of mass silent protest.
We really have nothing left to lose anymore and perhaps much to gain. Either way, I’ll be there.
Bridgette Wagner Jones
Daily Lobo Reader
