--Trudie Styler, actor and philanthropist
“Happy birthday Hitler!”
That’s what a crowd chanted outside of Boston, Massachusetts’ Mayor Michelle Wu’s house on a recent winter morning. Standing outside the newly elected mayor’s home in the tightly packed neighborhood of Roslindale, the handful of protestors have showed up at Wu’s residence since early January, to oppose her COVID vaccine mandate for all Boston city employees.
Wu has lived there for years, along with her husband, two young children and mother. Since Wu announced the vaccine requirement in late December 2021, the number of vaccinated stands at more than 95 percent among municipal workers. Some unions have opposed the policy and tried to stop it in court. They are also in direct negotiations with Wu to work out a solution.
But the rabble is still at it, right now, and have been for many weeks, most days starting bright and early at 7 am. That is the legal time they can begin their campaign of chanting, yelling, holding signs, blowing whistles and, until very recently, using bullhorns and cowbells to verbally harass the first term mayor.
Along with attacking Wu and her family (including her mom, who struggles with mental illness), the pack of protestors are hassling all the other people in the neighborhood. Stay at homes Dads caring for kids and working Moms trying to get children off to school. A 96-year-old veteran who lives near Wu is reported to be frightened by the noise. Imagine having to walk the gauntlet on the way to the bus stop?
Oh, and that “Happy Birthday Hitler”? Wu’s young son asked his mom who this “Hitler” person was, that the people outside were singing happy birthday to. Try explaining how there are some people who don’t like what Mommy does at work. That’s why they make all that noise.
The whole episode makes me wonder: when does legitimate protest cross over into the realm of actual harm? When does someone exercising their first amendment right to free speech morph from a freedom fighter into a bully, from one who protests into a scary harasser? Into someone who goes beyond the norm of having one’s voice heard in a democracy, to being right up an “enemy’s” face, literally. That’s the new norm in our country, in our civic dialogue, in how we disagree with each other.
Bullying behavior is now legitimate political discourse.
I have the right not only to be against what you stand for, but I also have the right to do all I can to intimidate you. To scare you. To threaten you and your loved ones, your neighbors too. I will mock you, publicly humiliate you and harass you to get what I want.
This was bound to happen. We had a Commander in Chief who regularly insulted and put down opponents on Twitter and in person, who mocked the disabled, women, and people from certain parts of Africa. If that is what passes for leadership, then, of course, we all have permission to bully. If he can do it, so can I!
Happens on the other side of the political aisle too. Just ask Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. In the summer of 2018, while eating out at a Louisville, Kentucky restaurant, the couple were harassed and verbally attacked by two patrons; that bullying was marked by yelling, flipping the finger, hurting that small business, and tossing food outside the restaurant.
Public bullying has gone from infamy to virtue.
The media contributes. Put on any cable news show. Watch as these devolve into shouting matches between the oh so self-righteous on the left and on the right. No pundit, no politician, no protestor is EVER wrong in 2022. Arrogant surety marks the political and elite classes. Have you heard? They are 100 percent correct and you are 100 percent wrong.
Now we have bullies with a microphone. Bullies tweeting. Bullies invading private spaces. Bullies taking over the capitol of Canada, Ottawa. Bullies storming our own Capitol. How else to describe January 6th, 2021? It was a violent a mob of bullies, who attacked the heart of American democracy.
Yet still, I believe in the need for our world and our political and social dialogue to reject bullying. To embrace kindness as the mark of our public relationships. Private relationships too. In the faith I grew up in and still practice, I was taught to lead with kindness always, no matter who I was dealing with. Learned that when I bully another, I’m bullying the very image of God that is a part of every single human being. I was taught that in the biblical story of the bully versus the boy, David against Goliath, we’re supposed to cheer for the little guy, not the mean old giant ogre.
Yes, you can call me corny, soft hearted, naïve, even pollyannish for still believing in simple human decency, one neighbor to another. I trust in the power of kindness. I also believe in free speech, the right to protest and to peaceably assemble, too. But bullying has no place in the political realm, the public arena or on a neighborhood street.
“Happy birthday Hitler!” Really?!
C’mon bullies. Please just go home already.
(Photo credit: Boston Globe)
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