Pacifica Forum Protest

Katie D.

January 18, 2010 - 2:02 PM

Where is the line between free speech and hate speech?

For years, the Pacifica Forum has used University of Oregon space to discuss controversial and inflamatory topics. There are no students in the group, but they can use the UO space because their founder is a retired professor.

If you are here in Eugene, the odds are good that you have noticed the media attention focused on this group in recent weeks. A week ago a group of students went to protest the Pacifica Forum, which generated a good amount of media attention, especially when Forum members began throwing around Nazi salutes and addressed students in ways that have been identified as insulting at the least, or threatening at the most. (Please see the Register Guard story for more information. Note: I am not the Katie cited in this article)

This is why there is a debate about the boundaries between free speech rights that should be protected, and hate speech that should not be tolerated. When a group convenes to discuss and debate "neglected or suppressed topics," as a Pacifica Forum leader stated during their meeting last Friday, that is a decision that should be supported by the community. However, when a group moves from scholarly interests in unpopular subjects to inviting internationally infamous white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, and racists to speak in their Forum, to me that is no longer a legitimate argument of free speech. It becomes a question of a platform for hatred and violent rhetoric, a place where forum members find it acceptable to "Zeig heil" the audience, to make anti-semitic remarks to children of Holocaust survivors, and to scream "white power" in the face of students.

On Friday, January 15, a large group of student protesters (approximately 250) protested the Pacifica Forum.

There is a long history we are protesting, including the Pacifica Forum's presence here on the UO campus. Our rallying cry was "Whose campus? OUR CAMPUS!" The Pacifica Forum meets weekly in the EMU: the student union. There are no students in the Forum. Their average age is over sixty. More importantly, these community members invite speakers whose hate speech directly targets communities who also meet in the EMU: the black student union, the LGBTQ Alliance, the Women's Center, and the Black Student Union, among others.

This is more than a question of differing opinion: it is a question of safety and comfort of our students. Why should neo-Nazis be allowed to meet in student space?

On Friday I was part of the crowd of students who attended the Pacifica Forum's meeting. There were moments of high drama, such as the moment when a Pacifica Forum member who had been called a Nazi by the crowed stood up, proudly offered the crowd a Nazi salute, and then left the building. Other tense moments included police removing student protesters from the crowd for causing disturbances. It was a peaceful protest, and even included a local middle school class who came out to see a student movement in action. Please check out the KEZI local news station report on the protest, including an interview with me. 

Generally the Forum members tried to settle the crowd and to answer questions leveled by students, professors, and community members. They consistently claimed to be a Free Speech group that had never advocated violence. They also stated that their group consisted of autonomous members, and that no person in the group spoke for the whole. There are three "types" of members: those who support free speech and neglected subjects, the anti-Zionists, and others.

The moderator of the meeting, Billy Rojas, told us that "sometimes free speech isn't pretty." This is certainly the case. It can be an exceedingly ugly thing to speak up for oppression and discrimination.

I ask the members of the Pacifica Forum to find a center of compassion within themselves. I would hope that they could draw on some wellspring of common humanity and stop inciting hatred and violent language. I would like to ask them what exactly they are trying to accomplish with their Nazi salutes, examine their actions for deeper motives, and recreate themselves in an image of peace and kindness.

I also ask the leadership of the University of Oregon to revoke their privileges to access student space. I ask that student and faculty leadership answer their dangerous presence with a compassionate request that they take their hate speech off of our campus, where at least their rhetoric will be physically remote from students, and their meetings not be legitimized by the academic setting and subsidized by taxpayer money and my student incidental fees.

Hatred does not thrive with public scrutiny. I believe firmly that it is the right and necessary task of students to call attention to this group, and to request that they not be allowed to continue as part of our campus. To be silent is to be implicated in their message. I refuse to allow our University to be tied to hate speech or oppression.

Please add your voice.