Come Together Right Now

What’s the right way to deal with political disagreements? What do you do, not when you happen to disagree about where the tax rate ought to be set but when you are confronted by passionate hatred and blank fear? Sure, there’s the civics textbook answer: Free speech is free no matter what the content. But what do you do when right outside your class there’s someone so convinced that your beliefs are wrong or evil that he’s going to hold up a noxious sign for hours on end?

No thought experiment or what-if for me, that was the story of the week. It played out in the public spaces, in lecture halls, and in the pages of this newspaper.

Monday afternoon: In the midst of an already tense environment on Sproul Plaza, with opposing groups set up on either side of the walkway, glaring at each other with menace, a glassy-eyed, determined older man who didn’t appear to be affiliated with any student group marched down the center of the Plaza. He held aloft an oversized sign upon which was written that Islam condoned child abuse and other reprehensible activities. As students and people passed by, I wasn’t entirely sure a fight wasn’t about to erupt.

I happened to be in the middle of a group of green-shirted activists, doing interviews for this column. Spontaneous debate broke out among several members as to what to do about the interloper. Should they try to surround him and chant him down? Let him know that his message would find little or no support here? Or should they ignore him? At least two members of socialist campus groups thought the best response was the first, and they went right up to him, chanting. Others held back. The police ambled over, but immediate violence did not appear to be in the offing, so they backed away.

I spoke to Yaman Salahi, an undergraduate and one of the editors of “The a-Rab,” who was standing next to me at the time: “To chant something and surround him is not the best response. It feeds into their propaganda line. And it’s contrary to the purpose of the week, which is to provide alternative terms for the debate. The way he’s framing it, we’re on the defensive already. With this week, we’re giving a positive message,” he said. “Look, we can have a discussion about what things they’re interested in without engaging in the rhetoric.” Yaman stayed away from the guy with the sign, and eventually left to go to class.

Thursday evening: Sometime around the fourth or fifth speech a thought occurred to me. I was watching hard-line socialists and moderate democrats, observant Muslims and fundamentalist atheists, Christians and Jews, top campus officials and little freshmen all move a little bit closer to each other. Last week I wrote that we like to keep ourselves in comfortable boxes instead of engaging each other across our differences. Well, over the course of the past week, we began work on that engagement. It’s what politics is at it’s finest. Weeks like this give me hope for the rest of the year.

A common refrain this week was that the right-wingers were motivated by hatred. I think that’s not quite it. More than anything, I felt fear emanating from their ranks. I don’t fault them for feeling it; I fault them for letting it rule them.

I can conclude only by ceding the floor to my friend Tinley Ireland, who gave, for my money at least, the best speech of the evening. Just as the sun set, shining right into her face, she stood up on the steps of Sproul Hall on that same consecrated spot where earlier in the day the fear-based community had shouted itself hoarse about the people “over there” who are just waiting, waiting to get us. She stood there and told us about her faith. She talked about how the hardest part of following Christ was to love­ not just her friends, but her enemies too. To stop having enemies at all, to feel that universal pulse of humanity, that spark of the divine that flows through all of our veins.

At the end she asked who in the crowd didn’t believe that Jesus was the son of God. Most hands went up. Mine did. She smiled, and as the light faded she simply and truly said, “I love you.” I’ve been on the receiving end of a few punches in my life, but nothing ever hit me that hard. I don’t know exactly what kind of politics or religion or philosophy that is—but whatever it is, where can I sign up?

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