On the Road: Background Music?

By Seth -
Week one of our Winter GAP tour has come to a close, affording me at last an opportunity to sip some chai and collect my thoughts as darkness falls across the Atlantic just a few blocks away.

We are in beautiful Florida, although we are not here for the sun. We are here to change minds.

The Genocide Awareness Project at Florida State University raised quite a stir. The opposition assembled in full force, producing not only signs bearing their support for Planned Parenthood and "choice" but also bed sheets spray painted with various slogans. They not only raised their voices to try to silence our message but also produced various instruments and shared with us their unique vocal qualities as we sought to engage students in discussions of abortion and morality.

To get a peek into what we faced, watch this video caught and edited by Alex Holzbach, the student leader who both made it possible for GAP to take place at FSU and is going to carry on the movement now that we've gone:



If this video were the only one I had to show, perhaps I would be discouraged after moving on from this campus to do it all over again. One would perhaps be justified in supposing our productivity was limited by the protesters.

However, this video is merely a snapshot of the two days spent exposing injustice and engaging in dialogue---yes, conversation did happen in spite of the distractions---on the campus.

For example, it was on this campus that a crowd of nearly twenty gathered around after a woman started to shout her disfavor in my direction. While it seems I was unsuccessful in convincing her that a pre-viability baby is not different in kind from a post-viability child, others listening to our conversation were persuaded. In fact, later a colleague of mine said that three students passed by her one at a time who'd been in that crowd and said that they had been "pro-choice" but that I had "blown their minds" and now they were opposed to abortion.

When the hecklers come, it is not time to retreat. Rather, it is time to be even more diligent in guarding our character so that we do not add offense to the truth by our manner. While we may not convince those who make the racket (or music, as perhaps it was meant to be?), we just might change the minds of those listening.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meet a Baby Saved

By Seth -
Image
In the middle of high school, I began to spend Thursdays throughout summer on Webster Street in Fort Wayne, IN. Good friend and stalwart defender of life Pam Durdahl called Thursday “the best and worst day of the week.” It was the best because you were with like-minded people—indeed, this is where I met Aubrie! But, what brought us all together is why it was the worst: This was the day each week when Ulrich Klopfer would come to town to kill babies. Details continue to be released in the horrific discovery this month that Klopfer stored babies’ bodies in the garage at his Illinois residence. But one note which grabbed my attention is that these babies died in the years of 2000-2002, the latter half of my high school days. All of these babies came from Indiana. And now we know some of them died in Fort Wayne, meaning while I was on that sidewalk, Klopfer was killing babies and taking them home. It seems it was not enough for him to violate the victims once. I didn’t know the...
Read more

Deeper than Shared Conviction

By Seth -
Image
If you were to stumble into the Created Equal training center this summer, you would find an interesting sight: an Ivy League graduate seated next to a high school senior, a vegan student enjoying a salad next to another savoring a hamburger, and hands shooting into the air or sudden applause as all passionately defend their position on a range of philosophical matters. This eclectic scene is Created Equal’s internship. At the beginning of the summer, our latest band of interns arrived with the usual awkwardness felt at the beginning of a school term. But what has united them over the past couple of months is far greater than the happenstance of selecting the same college course. Indeed it is deeper than shared conviction. Over the past two months, they’ve celebrated victories both intimate and public—from hearing a mother outside Planned Parenthood say she has changed her mind to watching the Ohio Senate pass the Dismemberment Abortion Ban. They’ve grappled in our classroom...
Read more

Out of Focus?

By Seth -
The Columbus Dispatch today ran a story about the Personhood initiative's arrival in the land of the Buckeyes. The article also referenced other recent Ohio efforts against abortion, such as the Heartbeat Bill . What leaped off of my screen, though, was the first comment following the piece: It's unfortunate with 9% unemployment, children and adults starving in the street, people losing their homes, crime rates increasing, and corporations buying our politicians, these people are fighting to make abortion illegal. We have freedom of religion in this country, but they want to impose their religious ideology on us, in this secular nation. People can't find jobs, and children go without food. The most important thing on their mind is making abortion illegal. Jesus would be appalled at these people. Don't believe me? Read the Holy Bible. Jesus never spoke about abortion. But he did speak a lot about helping the poor and the homeless. - Toni Goodman Here's an experim...
Read more