Are All Protests Equal? Do Marginalized Groups Have Higher Social Status?

Are all men and women created equal? Are our rights, as enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, not for all, but only a chosen few? Do we all have an equal right to protest, as we do the presumption of innocence? Is reparation for historical Injustice an adequate reason for separate measurement scales of social conduct and or misconduct?

Have these once cherished monuments of human rights fully transitioned into privileges for self-defined marginalized groups? In this article, we will examine this and more as we dive into recent events in Humboldt County and connect them to the dots of ever-widening nuances.

Our first step is an analysis of social justice, reparations, and the fairness pendulum.

Reparations in Social Justice

Though equality was among the founding principles of this country, it constantly seems like a work in progress, the scale of human rights tipped too far one way or the other, or a pendulum of social justice swinging back and forth. It wasn’t just in our country, though; throughout the world, there has been a social development period where the hand was always on one side of the scale, and the pendulum only seemed to swing that way.

So perhaps it’s possible that what we see today with the treatment of special interest groups is an equal or greater reaction to the actions of social injustice that held the scale and swung the pendulum in the past.

spe·cial

/ˈspeSH(ə)l/

adjective

better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.

“they always made a special effort at Christmas”

 Justified in Response

I recently read an article about an incident where “a pride flag displayed for months was desecrated in a popular Arcata community garden” this was a horrible injustice; not only is it vandalism, but it is also a social attack on a specific group.

In response to this heinous act, it was reported that a protest was organized and directed at a local Ferndale Church, which had posted a sign on its front lawn stating:

It is unclear if the people who experienced the social injustice of the flag burning in the Arcata garden even believed that the person who committed the act of vandalism attended that Ferndale church. Some might call the response and act of stereotyping:

It was also reported that the protesters chose to utilize various instruments to disrupt the church service, also that the pastor and some people at the service might not have been too pleased with the disruption.

“During the Saturday noon protest, the Rev. Tyrel Bramwell, pastor at St. Mark’s (one of two Lutheran churches in Ferndale), read from the Bible, his voice bellowing above the din of kazoos, guitars, singing and speakers.

When pulled aside and asked what he thought about the people showing up at the church, he responded, “I think they are upset with us for what they are perceiving to be hurtful. Our intention is to be sympathetic toward anybody who may be experiencing hurt.

We never intended to cause hurt. We thank them for coming and those trying to engage in dialogue, we appreciate that opportunity. For those who are being disruptive, we forgive them, and we just move forward.”

Times Standard

Bramwell described the interruptions:

“Many people shout louder and start singing as we try to explain when someone would ask a question. They blocked me with their body, with their flags, with their kazoos while chanting to where I have to raise my voice to where I look agitated, which is part of the political maneuver.”

Was this reaction, showing up to disturb the church service at St Marks done out of love or hate?

Representation and Mischaracterization

In some ways, this protest bears similarity to the Halloween protest at the Jefferson community center, where concerned parents and other community members chose to peacefully protest the sexualized dances for cash tips performed by the drag queens & kings. In some ways, the protests were different, the concerned parents knew there was, for a fact, a drag show being performed in front of very young children at the event they were protesting.

On the other hand, LGBTQ… Church protest group predicated their actions on their perception that the vandal who burnt the rainbow flag on someone’s lawn was a full-fledged congregation member. They leveraged this bet on the fact that whoever committed the vandalism was presumably religious or held pious motivations.

It is remarkably similar to the “random association tactics” employed by the Humboldt Human Rights Commission, where they associated an anti-gay sticker on a bench in Mckinleyvile with the concerned parents who showed up to protest at the Halloween all-age Drag Show. The two separate incidents appear not to be connected with one another at all.

The situations also differ when you reconcile how the community and local media represented and characterized those who protested and how the media defined what inspired each given protest. The LGBTQ… protest group was represented as protesting the fact a flag was burnt on someone’s lawn, then subsequently characterized as justified within their actions of disturbing the church assembly.

On the other hand, the parents and concerned community members protesting sexualized dances for cash tips were represented as protesting the gay community, then consequently characterized as a hate group for disturbing the LGBTQ… event. Watch the video below for a good idea of how KMUD portrayed this protest where concerned parents showed. We’ve added a video from the event over the narration to illustrate better what happened at that all-ages drag show protest.

All age Drag Spreads it Wings in Humboldt

In stark contrast to the reaction of the local media and government bodies regarding the all-ages drag show protest at Eureka’s Jefferson center, a few days later, a 21+ Halloween drag show occurred in Arcata, and nobody showed up to protest.

Almost as if the people who came to protest the previously mentioned all-age drag show were not interested in protesting adult-only LGBT-identifying people throwing LGBT events. Could it be that the group of parents was mischaracterized by local media and local government? Could it be they were indeed justified in their protest? Is it possible the LGBTQ community made a mistake in choosing to host and promote all-age drag shows without expecting concerned parents to protest?

In December, Queer Humboldt SO/GI/E Diversity education night took place in Arcata without incident or anyone showing up to record or protest the event. Once again, making it appear that this so-called Hate group only was showing up to an event for the particular fact that it included sexualized dancing in front of young children for cash tips.

Is this another example of the concerned parents acting on a set of principles and not blind hatred? What is the name of this Hate group, and what precisely do they stand for and against?

The next event planned to take the show to smaller and more unsuspecting traditional communities, resulting in an all-aged drag show scheduled for February 4, 2023, in Ferndale at the old steeple Church turned music venue.

But was Ferndale ready for such a shift in what many people believed to be a conduit for public composure and presentation?

Would the same liberal metropolitan playbook have traction in a rural, primarily conservative community?

Everybody was in for a bit of a surprise!

St Mark Says Not So Fast

Would you believe that the same church mentioned in the story, which had come under fire for putting up the signage offering spiritual guidance to LGBT-identifying individuals, might protest the issue with an all-age drag show popping up in their neighborhood?

Indeed they did, putting up another sign warning in a very straightforward manner of the “drag show for kids” coming to The Old Steeple. This sign not only brought the ire of The Old Steeple proprietors but also alerted the Ferndale community at large, who ultimately rejected the entire concept of an all-age drag show for kids.

But how would all those on the other side of the pendulum react to such an affront, such a blatant rejection of what is considered to be a virtue in this age?

They would react consistently with their philosophical, political, and spiritual paradigm. The same reaction we get from the left across our great country. Well, that is precisely how the local left mob reacted here. Lashing out unreasonably as a coping mechanism to help them deal with the cancellation of the February 4th all-age drag show by redefining why it was shut down. They framed this as the LGBTQ community again being the victim of an allegedly dangerous extremist group planning a protest.

This, in reality, was a perceived threat that hadn’t or wouldn’t come to fruition, all because of a sign.

Silent Majority vs The Echo Chamber

Lost Coast Outpost, lashing out over the loss of the February 4th all-age drag show, quickly released a reactionary piece alleging, as previously stated, that the reason the event was canceled was for fear of safety from “Extremists.” They allege that the untold actions of extremist protesters, which we know from the Halloween incident will go as far as to engage in loud discussions and wave flags of American flags, may show up with potentially more people, with more American Flags, who, in turn, may also go as far as to engage in even louder and numerous discussions!

Life in the echo chamber gets tough; in the Lost Coast Outpost comment sections, toughness is the culture. Where opposing views are extinguished before giving way to the smallest flames of a distinguishable alternative viewpoint, this readily enforces the illusion of a majority.

This is not all the fault of Lost Coast Outpost; this truth lays heavily on the shoulders of those who know better yet remain silent under the premise that censorship is just part of the way the world works. Perhaps in the small Victorian village of Ferndale, the world works differently, where people are unwilling to stay silent.

Maybe they are unwilling to accept monumental shifts in what is historically acceptable within their community.

Let Us View the World Through Each Other’s Eyes

Drifting back to the opening conceptualization, is reparation for historical injustice an adequate reason for separate measurement scales of social conduct and or misconduct?

What would be the reaction of the community if the media had represented the LGBTQ… protest as being purely derived from deep anti-Christian bias?

What if the local media instead labeled the LGBTQ… community as a hate group harassing Christians, neglecting entirely the purpose for which they had organized a protest in the first place?

Lost Coast Outpost and Friends Omit Thougtful Reasonable Remarks from Ferndale Music Co

Media groups like the Lost Coast Outpost’s parent company, Lost Coast Communications LLC, have illustrated time and time again their incapability of acting and/or reacting outside of a narrowly set structure of bias. This bias renders them unable to report the not-so-hard-to-imagine reality of a small town rejecting things like all-age drag shows. It also makes it hard for them when the subjects of their interviews have the following remarks about this incident when interviewed subsequently by Lost Cost Populist’s news team.

Why were comments like these omitted from the Outpost article?

Are we to believe the Ferndale Music Company would view Lost Coast Populist as a publication with a friendlier bias to their choosing to host an all-age drag show than Outpost and the rest of the local woke media?

Instead of accepting that people hold different perspectives, belief structures, and philosophical positions in our community, the local media and their leftist mob deny these fundamental truths. This manifests in their articles as the ever-popular victim card, crying wolf about another imaginary group of “dangerous extremists” they require to stoke fear in the hearts of their readers; a reaction they require so they don’t think too hard about the situation, research it from every angle, and discover the plethora of nuances that indeed exist in this saga.

You know what they say about the results of crying wolf in repetition; such actions of ignorance lead to irrelevance and eventually being all but ignored for caution enabling such behavior would just perpetuate its harmful effect.