"Ground Rules and Tips for Challenging the Right."
> >
> >"Be careful to respect people's right to hold opinions and religious
> >beliefs that you may find offensive.
>
Doug H:
> I respect their right to hold those beliefs, but do I have to respect
> the beliefs themselves? The literal truth of Genesis? The need for
> Iraq to burn to fulfill prophecies of Armageddon? They're ludicrous
> and dangerous.
>
> Doug
I spent ten years doing community organizing in a White working class Chicago neighborhood that was being organized to oppose integration by neonazis. Most of the people I was trying to organize were racist in a generic way, but not neonazis. (well--a few of them actually had been Nazis, but they were old).
This would be a loser script in a door to door campaign:
= = =
Hi,
Your ideas are ludicrous and dangerous. You suffer from false consciousness and are embracing the social construct of race that diverts attention from your class interests. You need to renounce the White race and smash the Nazi scum.
= = =
This was the winning script:
= = =
Hi,
I'm your neighbor. I own a house over on Artesian Avenue. I'd like to talk to you about what's going on in the neighborhood. You know, the violence and racial tension. I'd like to hear what you think, and then I'd like to talk about some ideas that some of us have been discussing over at the Southwest Community Congress. We meet in the neighborhood at a hall over near Kedzie. You might know some of the people we work with, Father Chinook at St. Emaciated Parish, and Joe Craftmen who is the manager at the Sears on Western Avenue, and Sara Lubelink from the Pipefitters union. I can leave a pamphlet, but I'd really like to come in and discuss this with you. We think this racial tension is getting in the way of making this a better and safer neighborhood.
= = =
Every time some Dem/lib beltway blowhard uses the phrase "religious political extremist" it pushes a White working class evagelical toward the Republican Party because they correctly sense the patronizing snear behind the phrase that disrespects their religious beliefs.
-Chip