check your biases

i got raked over the coals by a few souls on my list-serv by speaking lightly about last weekend's peace rally (i didn't talk much about the speakers, but spent time desribing the hula hoopers, the capoiestas and other goings on). my deal is, why does a rally have to be this somber event?

and then i realized...

as long as protestors — be they pro-life or pro-peace or anti-wto or what have you — as long as they are perceived as outside the "norm" or "brick-throwing, profanity yelling" extremists, nobody has to take them seriously. so, the media and Average Joe American watches the melodrama. they ignore the peaceful protestors, the people standing up next to one another to be counted as one of the many against or for a certain ideology.

by marginalizing protestors in this way, we don't have question our beliefs, our biases, our prejudices, our laziness, or our ignorance.

so, it actually is worth it (for the status quo) to show the protestors as wound up, brick-throwing, screaming crazies.

pictures stephen passed on (he's one of the all-black body bags seen in the first photo) really sum up my personal experiences in rallies... peaceful, friendly, full of hope with a tweaking of not being too serious *and* trying to get a message across.

* * * * *

yesterday at lunch i heard a snippet from the humankind radio show.

today's show was about abortion activism (both pro-life and pro-choice) and what happened in massachusets a few years back when a pro-lifer went and gunned down some health workers.

the show focused on the dialogue that began between the two camps.

what they found was, before the attack and the mediator, the two camps did not talk.

the main pro-lifer they interviewed said she went out of her way to not speak to people in the other camp. i didn't get to hear what the pro-choicer had to say, but i assumed it was the same thing.

and i began to think about it and how common this is.

if you don't talk to the people in your other camp, your opinion doesn't need to be challenged. you don't have to think of these people as people just like you.

but once a dialog begins, the differences begin to melt. sure: there will always be differences... but... if you are really talking, you will have to question your own belief system and the way you choose to view the other side.

this was a great example of peacemaking i thought.

i was pretty bummed i didn't get to hear the whole thing.