Standing up

Following up on the situation in Ann Arbor, where anti-abortion thugs went to work to prevent a former state legislator from giving a talk at a local Catholic Diocese ...

Steve Coffman writes in to update on Monday night's gathering, which was moved to a different location:

It went amazingly well! You might not read about it in the paper again because no protesters showed up (hence no more drama)! A talk like this normally gets between 20-40 people. We had about 50 people turn out despite a night with bad weather, while all the University students were off on spring break, for a rescheduled talk that didn't make it into the local event publications. The very actions of those who opposed the talk resulted in an increased turnout, by causing the publication of the article on the first page of the B section.

As a special bonus, the article also publicized the extremity of those that believe that abortion is of such importance that no other issues should be considered, and that any action in opposition to abortion is justified. There's a meeting of local Catholic clergy next week to talk about this experience. Hopefully, the Catholic clergy and lay community have begun a conversation about tolerance of dissent from official positions and appropriate limits of advocacy. About 50 percent of American Catholics are Pro-choice (according to Gallup/CNN/USA Today Poll, April 30-May 2, 1999), and the view that pro-choice Catholics should be harassed or excommunicated is not a popular one.

Neither I nor the press have yet been able to pry the tapes or transcripts of what exactly was miscommunicated over Tom Monahan's (former owner of Domino's pizza) radio network, but we're still trying. Regardless, the talk wasn't about abortion, or media ownership, and its message about voting reforms like Instant Runoff Voting was able to be
well communicated.

Steve also was subjected to a barrage of threats and hate mail, though none were specific or credible enough to pursue. Still, he wisely copied the mail in case anything were to happen.

Steve runs a blog called EdgeWise, where he posted the following thoughts on the experience:

... I feel that any real threat has disipated after the press shined a light on what was going on. I certainly stopped getting any more nasty or threatening email. I feel like I've helped preclude future violence or intimidation directed at others. The funny thing about one person making a difference, is that when you stand up, you find you're not standing alone.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Incidentally, Steve mentions the apparent involvement of Tom Monaghan, the Domino's Pizza tycoon, behind the scenes in this kind of rabid anti-abortion thuggery (I won't smear activism by calling it that). Another Michigan reader, J.H., writes in with a little more background on this point:

There may be a little more to that story. Ave Maria Law School, from which the head bad guy came, is the brainchild of Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza, ultra-conservative Catholic, Ann Arbor resident, and a bit of a mini-Richard Scaife. Since he sold his company a few years back, he's poured much of his time and money into trying to influence local (Ann Arbor area) politics, except that he likes to put others in the forefront while he quietly supplies the cash. He funded a drive to repeal an anti-gay-discrimination in an adjacent city; there was an attempt to make it look like the work of a large grass-roots movement, but it turned out to be just Tom. He also tried to secretly recruit and fund stealth candidates in an attempt to take over the local township board (which refuses to let him run amok with his various schemes, at the expense of other township residents who aren't billionaires). He might have been a money guy for the affirmative action lawsuit against the U of Michigan. There may be others of which I am not aware (it's been a couple years since I lived in AA and kept up with the news there). The connection in this story to Ave Maria makes me think that this may be another one of those attempts.