Last week was a hard one. But the events of Saturday morning put me on my heels.
The Mayor of Rockford (Tom) had reached out and asked if he could hand out tulips outside my restaurant on Saturday. Tom’s a friend, and I thought it was a nice way to get the word out about his campaign before Tuesday’s election.
When I showed up at the restaurant on Saturday to make sure Tom was comfortable, a pro-life protestor was already there, yelling loudly at Tom. He was later joined by a priest. This is America, and we all have freedom of speech. So I offered the protestors coffee.
Over the course of the next 2 hours, the protestor got increasingly personal with his jabs, until he started spewing threatening remarks about Tom, his family, his deceased father. I won’t repeat them here.
I’ve seen hateful words like his written in the comment sections of social media. But I’ve never heard someone talk like that to someone’s face. It was frankly terrifying.
Not to mention an ineffective way to rally people to a cause.
Reader, I know we have freedom of speech. We’re free to think what we will, and we’re free to hate. But should we use our freedom like this? Hell no. No matter what you believe, using words to threaten and hurt provides no path forward for humanity, and it certainly doesn't provide peace of mind.
I’ll leave you with a picture of a sandhill crane. I had a nice long sit with this bird this weekend. We had no speech exchanged between us. Such a calm interaction. More of that kind of freedom, please. See you next Monday. -Em
