Comments | jwg: My day of community activism meetings

jwg

My day of community activism meetings

Feb 05, 2009 17:55

This morning I met with Kathleen Gilroy, the person who recently founded a Cambridge Public Library social network that I'd recently joined to talk about what we could do with this network. She is a very interesting person - an entrepreneur who is the CEO of Swift Media Networks that is working on social networking tools for meetings and ( Read more... )

library, politics, cambridge

Comments 3

vasilatos February 7 2009, 04:47:04 UTC

Why is Fred Phelps visiting the high school?

I've been enjoying WBC threads in other forums... ursomniac February 10 2009, 23:56:43 UTC

... Mostly FARK.

One of the more interesting ideas that people have used when faced with a confrontation of the WBC (usually at a funeral), is to have a HUGE fundraiser for some (typically GBLO*-friendly) charity. You pledge based upon the number of WBC-ers who actually show up, and how long they stay. Then you make SURE the media know about it so any press THEY get is counterbalanced by the charity work.

The beauty of this is (IMHO) that there's no direct confrontation - so the WBC can't pull any legal shenanigans, and the MORE they protest, the MORE funds are raised. It ends up being in their best interest to not show up at all. Their overarching desire to be attention whores backfires because more attention = more fundraising (and the opportunity to likewise get the word out about the fundraiser...). :-)

The post-event headlines would be precious: "Thanks to the WBC protest, we raised $5,400 for gay youth!"

Re: I've been enjoying WBC threads in other forums... jwg February 11 2009, 05:12:42 UTC

There is some talk about fund raising. Several of the local organizers raised a fair amount of money with pledges for each second of Rick Warren's prayer at the inauguration.

I don't think anything will convince the WBC people of anything, but their visit can be a good catalyst for something else - fund raising or raising consciousness among others about gayness - they definitely will be doing stuff inside the school that week that they wouldn't have done had the WBC not come (sometimes they don't show up.

At the May 17, 2004 same-sex marriage event in front of city hall where there were thousands of people celebrating on the street there was a handful of WBC people who looked pathetic and were completely ignored.