I live just a couple of blocks South of a big Funeral Home and cemetery here in Kansas City, Missouri. About an hour west, in Topeka Kansas is noted midwestern hate-monger, Fred Phelps.
Today, on the Martin Luther King holiday I was heading to lunch and when I drove past the funeral home I saw this.
I started to get angry, because usually when I see those flags lined up in the funeral home driveway like that I know this is the next thing I’ll see.
Yep, the so-called Reverend Fred Phelp’s crew (I don’t think the man himself braved the cold) was there in all their venom spewing splendor. There to protest another Iraq war soldier’s funeral.
When I pulled up to the stop light in front of the funeral home I could hear them from across the wide road, singing their bastardized version of God Bless America, it’s the one where they sing “except fags” all kinds of other epithets. I remembered the documentary about Phelps from a few months ago where the bikers would rev their engines to drown out Phelp’s crews singing and chanting.
It occurred to me, there were no bikers.
The Phelpsians we’re just too loud for my tastes. Then I remembered a couple of immutable truths I learned from ten+ years of touring in a rock band: (1) music can save a life and salve a soul and (2) the power of wattage is louder than any heckler.
So, I drove past and came back to a stop in front of the Phelpsians, still chanting their brand of hate, still too audible. There I was stopped just six feet from them, between them and the funeral home, and something WIERD happend to my car; all the windows rolled down, the stero turned up as loud as possible, and Minor Threat’s 1983 album Out of Step was BLARRING from my car. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I just turned on my hazard lights and waved people past me.
Then another thing happened, a guy driving a big box truck pulled up in front of me and parked. Blocking the view of the Phelpsian’s from the cemetary. He gave me a thumbs up from his window while Ian McCay sang “Think Again.” Then, I noticed the car behind me hadn’t moved. I was afraid he was upset at me for blocking the intersection. But I realized he had his hazard lights on too. He was waving people on around us. People drove by and layed on their horns, more noise. I saw the procession pull in to the funeral home from the other direction, and as the music in my car faded I heard something - the Phelpsians were silent. They’d stopped singing, stopped chanting and just held their signs for no one but me, the guy in the box truck and the guy behind me. Three people who I think already know, God doesn’t hate fags or dead soldiers, just Phelps does.
What did I learn from this? What does this have to do with Progressive politics and Democratic Politics?
I learned that in the face of hate and animus, collective action is contagious. You don’t have to do much (but maybe be a nuisance) to start or create a movement. In the 60s, Democrats active in the civil rights movement understood that standing up to the forces of hate and advocating for change requires collective action.
Was my blasting Minor Threat going to put an end to hate and bigotry? Was it as important as the civil rights movement? Hardly. But it was a lesson to me that I’d forgotten. That large change comes about from small collective action. And you don’t have to be anything more than inspired to be a part of something. On the celebration of Martin Luther King, here's to all the leaders who inspire. And here's to the forces of change - may they ring louder than ignorance and hate.
Ignorance, it set your standards
Intelligence, that don't work in your brain
You're an adult, so you act like a child
Don't even try to explain
This stupid shit, it's been done
You think you're the only one?
THINK AGAIN
-- Ian MacKaye and MInor Threat