For Once I'm Proud to be at USM

hello again!

ok, so dont get used to me posting regularly... it probably wont happen... I just have something rather great to share!

Have you all heard of the Genocide Awareness Project? GAP for short. It is completely normal if you haven't, but if you are a college student then you might be unfortunate enough to have them invade your campus at some point.

the GAP is a pro-life group that travels around the country to college campuses to display large bilbords and talk about what they believe. I would normally have no problem with this, everybody is entitled to their own opinion, except that this group is like the West Burrow Baptist Church in that even other pro-life organisations are appalled by their tactics.

the images on their bilbords are created to provoke angry and possibly even violent reactions. they say they are a non-religious organisation and are doing this because they "love everybody" but on their bilbords they show images (obviously photoshopped) of late term abortions that they have labeled as first trimester. Here is an example of one of their displays, and here is a diagram of what a fetus ACTUALLY looks like at those ages, WARNING!!! If you are AT ALL squeamish, i would suggest NOT looking at the image that the GAP puts out, it is photoshopped, but it was origionally either a late term abortion (which is illegal unless the mother's life is in danger if she carries to term) or the remains of a miscarriage. (note, the 1st numbers in the 2nd image are the weeks after conception of the fetus, typically it is only legal to abort a fetus up until 21 weeks, though this can vary by state).

not only does this group display these graphic images, they display them along side images of the Holocaust, swasitkas included, or images of genocide in africa, or even the lynching of african americans in the deep south. These images are MEANT to cause a reaction, however these methods are UNACCEPTABLE!

In my school we have a very large population that have escaped zones where genocide is prevalent. that was their reality, many still have family there, and these images show what they faced and puts it next to images of something that a woman had to do to save her life, or something that happened despite her best efforts. these images are deceitful and cause great harm to our community. And our college took their money, and allowed them to walk onto our campus.

thankfully, one of the faculty that knew this had happened had the foresite to let the student body know what was going to happen. The outrage I witnessed in my peers was quickly focused into action. there was many plans on how to block out their images, one idea was to create moving barricades such as the ones used to block out the WBBC when the picket funerals. this was shot down with many other's because it would impede the group's "first amendment rights." eventually it was decided that the best course of action was to ignore them and to not engage them as much as possible.

the group created maps with little descriptions about what was going on and distributed them around campus. we had stations where students involved in the group (and later we had more volunteers) would warn other students who didnt know what was happening about what was ahead.

The GAP (from what one of the organizers told one of our students)get 250-500 people to stop at their displays normally in their 2 day visits, and despite the group having chosen a place where there is a lot of traffic (especially on nice days) they had less than 100 of our students stop.

From what we know of their group, they get a lot of their funding for traveling around by sueing students who impede their first amendment rights, or who try to assault them in one way or another. Many students are normally jailed for one reason or another when this group visits campuses. NONE of out students were jailed, none gave into the bait. Infact, because they were getting so little attention, they were told off more than once for soliciting inside the buildings.

My peers created a group called the Student Response to the Genocide Awareness Project, and called the action they carried out Take Another Path. We created patches and provided another spot for students to gather to take their mind off the GAP (called the Carnival of Coincidence) and had the chaplains and other people for available if anybody needed to talk about how the displays made them feel if they saw them. Our group made an image for this plan, and distributed it around campus in the form of patches if a student wanted one... or more. Here is the symbol that was designed for our response. We joked about the GAP's calling it "a satanic symbol" because "it is a heart with a stake through it," it really is a type of (buddhist?) symbol for some sort of peace... it was explained to me, but i confess i forget the specifics.



the best part of the whole response was that there were people across all faiths, and with all stances on the issue of abortion coming together to fight for a common cause. this shows that while you may be pro-life or pro-choice the tactics the GAP were not approved of by anybody. Everybody thought they were horrible, including the number that was provided on their flyers, who didnt even know that their informtion was being spread around by the GAP. (On a side note, the number provided on their bilbords, "for post abortion counciling" connected us to a sex hotline... whoops!!! :D )

Even when 4 school buses of HS students and younger showed up to visit the planetarium the group quickly responded to the change and escorted them away from the display.

One mother came up to us the day after the children had come to thank us for helping her 13 year old son, who had had the misfortune to walk past the GAP and was stopped by one of the people there. She told us that he had been horrified and that the GAP personnel wouldnt stop talking to him despite his pleas for them to stop, and then she thanked us, because one of the students from the response team had swept him away and escorted him to a place where he was safe from the display, asking him if he wanted to talk to anybody about it.

this is only one of the outrageous things this group did, another was parking their truck (shown in the link provided above) over an overpass, next to a middle school.

I could go on about how harmful this project is, but im guessing you get the picture. I am so proud of my school, for our peaceful response and how well it worked. We have decided that we are going to make starter packets for all the other schools that the GAP plans of visiting in future, the list of which can be found on their home page. We hope in this way that there will be less students that will respond to them, creating the response they want and dont deserve.

So, my plea is to any student who reads this, and goes to the home page of the GAP and finds that their school is on the invasion list, please please PLEASE! if you dont use the same symbol and name that my school did, create your own, dont allow them to get the better of you! Fight them by ignoring them, maybe if everybody shows that nobody cares (or appears to care) they will go away permanently! Dont allow them to get what they want, no matter what your view is on the issue...

one last thing, the definition of genocide is: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group (provided by Merriam-Webster).

Thank you for reading!!!