Hate Group From Kansas

November 9, 2009

Six picketers from the Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kan., stood outside the Cooperman Jewish Community Center on Northfield Avenue in West Orange last Tuesday. The Westboro group, which is opposed to gays, Jews, the US army, and President Obama, spent 30 minutes in West Orange on its two-day tour of New Jersey, which includes additional stops such as New Jersey’s Anti Defamation League headquarters and other locations around the state. This hateful group has also protested at military funerals. As three police officers and two Department of Justice workers stood nearby, Shirley Phelps Roper, a leader of the group, called President Obama the Antichrist, among other names.
Instead of staging a counter-demonstration which would give this group the attention that they want, residents of Essex and Morris counties gathered inside the building and discussed intolerance and the importance of standing up to discrimination. Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Montclair was one of about a hundred people who came to stage the peaceful protest. He said, “I’m here because I think hate needs to be answered with love. I feel really sorry for people [like this Westboro group] with so little value in their lives, who need to try to live other people’s lives and make them miserable.”
I was absolutely shocked that such bigotry and hate could take place so close to home, and just down the road from my school in Livingston. This event serves as a reminder that we all must be aware and alert to the actions of those around us, and stand up to discrimination.

More recently, this hate group visited Rutgers University. To learn more about the demonstration, see these links

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2009/10/22/Westboro_Heads_to_NJ_to_Picket_Jews

http://njjewishnews.com/article/statewide/jcc-talks-tolerance-as-a-church-preaches-hate/