Nearly two-hundred people gathered at USM’s Woodbury Campus Center on Friday, November 21, for a “rally against hate”, prompted by incidents across the state that have made startling – and for many Mainers, embarrassing – international news.
The crowd was largely a mix of activists and politicians, including Maine Governor John Baldacci and USM president Selma Botman, who delivered short statements to a room teeming with signs reading “Hope Not Hate” and “We Will Not Be Silent”.
The rally responded most directly to a sign spotted at the Oak Hill General Store in Standish, days after the presidential election. According the Associated Press, the poster invited customers to put $1 into a “shotgun pool” revolving around how and when Barack Obama might be assassinated.
“Let’s hope someone wins,” the sign reportedly read, below a list of ways the act could be carried out. The store has been closed since the initial outcry, which prompted a federal investigation and was written about everywhere from The Washington Times to The Guardian newspaper in Britain.
The store’s owner has denied that the sign even existed.
Here in Maine, it has spurred intense debate, as leaders, lawmakers, and police have rushed to condemn it and other, more racially-motivated acts following the election of the country’s first African-American president.
On November 5, a student at Gray New-Gloucester High School reportedly disrupted class with what have been described only as “racist remarks” about the President-elect – followed by a confrontation with a black student in a hallway later on, and racist graffiti on a bathroom wall.
Also following the election, officials in Tremont and Bar Harbor investigated separate incidents in which black cardboard figures were found hanging from nooses in trees, taken by many as an allusion to nation’s history of lynching black citizens.
At the Woodbury rally on Friday, representatives from the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, Maine Civil Liberties Union, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland sought to present a strong counter-point to the unfortunate headlines.
After Reverand Jill Saxby, executive director of the Maine Council of Churches, kicked off the event with a prayer, President Botman took the podium.
“Thank you for coming to this sobering rally,” Botman said. “We at the University of Southern Maine[ …] prize diversity. We are built on a foundation of tolerance, civility, and respect.”
“We want to link arms to ensure that no incidences of racial or religious division separate us,” she said, quickly introducing the next speaker, Governor Baldacci, whose brief remarks echoed her condemnation.
“Maine is a welcoming state, we embrace diversity and we reject hate.” Baldacci said. “While incidents may have been isolated, they are not to be taken lightly.”
The solemn tone that opened the night was soon disrupted after host Rachel Talbot Ross, president of Portland’s NAACP chapter, introduced the city’s newly reappointed mayor, Jill Duson. Back in 2004, at the start of her first yearlong term, the city councilor and self-proclaimed activist became Portland’s first African-American mayor.
“We gather to offer an expanded definition of N.I.M.B.Y. – we gather to say ‘not in my backyard.'” Duson said, words spoken calmly but instantly eliciting cheers and shouts of agreement.
“Yes, the hate mongers have freedom of speech.” she said. “And we, the ‘hope mongers’, to use the words of Barack Obama…have an absolute duty to speak back.”
Talbot-Ross continued to energize the crowd by invoking an old call-and-response from the 1960s civil rights movement.
“When I say ‘fire it up,’ you say ‘ready to go!'” she told the crowd, who also obliged when she asked them to walk around and introduce themselves to strangers.
“Fill the room, fill the room,” she said, “This is a rally!”
Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion, saying he hadn’t had time to prepare remarks, said that he would instead “steal some from my two little girls, who are now women.”
He recalled his daughter, after being bullied at primary school, describing the sensation by saying, “dad, my heart hurts.” To which he reminded her that the bully’s did too, “they just don’t know it yet.”
He mentioned that his daughter has called him from California in recent weeks, asking what he and others can do about the outbreak of hate speech. “We can’t fix it if we rely on the law,” he told his daughter, and then spoke directly to the gathering.
“The police that are here, I’m proud of them. We’re here to affirm that you count on us and you’re important. But you’ve got to fix it.”
He was just one of many in an eclectic line-up of speakers that, along with denouncing hateful acts, reminded those in attendance of Maine’s sordid history with racism. He noted that until the 1970s, Maine had the largest per-capita membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Speakers also touched on the daunting task of speaking to, not just against, the perpetrators.
“That’s the toughest job, and we as police are mindful of this,” said Dion. “It’s the courage to recognize that they are human too, and we’ve got to reach out to them.”