"Ann Arbor Liberals"

Commentary: WUOM Radio The Rev. Matthew Lawrence May 19, 1998 Canterbury House, Ann Arbor

When my wife and I told our friends in Boston that we were moving to Ann Arbor, a lot of them said, "Oh, you'll like it there. It's a really liberal town."

The idea of moving to a "liberal town" made us inwardly cringe. Not because we're not liberals; it was just that we didn't want to be thought of as liberals.

But actually, the word "liberal" is a perfectly good word. It comes from the Latin, "liber," meaning free. For 500 years, liberalism has been about freedom: freedom from ignorance, from prejudice; from government repression. Liberals are committed to free speech and open minds; they favor nonviolent methods of social change -- dialogue and education -- because in an open society, the best ideas win.

Liberals also protect minorities against the tyranny of the majority, because sometimes majority rule can become mob rule.

So why do liberals hate being called liberals? Well, speaking as one, I think I can say this: it's because the radicals are always making us feel guilty. You see, deep down, we know that the radicals are ideologically more pure than the rest of us. We liberals live in a guilty world of compromise: we drive our internal combustion engines to the postoffice to drop-off a check to the Sierra Club. Radicals ride bicycles to the food coop to buy Nicaraguan coffee.

Radicals have always made us feel guilty.

But all that changed for me on May 9 of this year, when I personally witnessed a whole bunch of good Ann Arbor liberals get violently assaulted by radicals bent on mob rule.

Now in case you haven't heard about this, let me briefly summarize. 38 Ku Klux Klan members came to Ann Arbor on May 9 for what they called a recruiting rally; a violent gang of over 200 so-called radicals marched out to meet them, ready to rumble; and between them stood over a hundred regular citizens of Ann Arbor wearing yellow T-shirts that said Peace Team.

They were young and old, Christian and Jewish and Bahai and pagan, black and white and brown and yellow and gay and straight. They represented a variety of political persuasions as well -- a lot of them hate being called liberals -- but on that day they were liberals in the noblest tradition of the word: committed to freedom; protective of the rights of the minority ; standing for peace against mob rule.

And this time it was the so-called radicals who were the mob. I call them radicals because their ideology is classic communism. But their tactics give radicals a bad name; a better name would be "thugs."

Fearlessly modelling nonviolent resistance to mob rule, the Peace Team members placed themselves between the Klan and the militants. They were beaten, they were kicked, they were cursed, they were spit on, they were sexually groped; and still they held their ground. It was only when the Peace Teams were about to be trampled that they asked for the police to intervene.

But it was in the next few moments, after the whole crowd fell back from the pepper spray, that the word "liberal" was redefined in my mind. Having already endured agonizing punishment, the Peace Teams chose to make their stand again. Again the mob attacked, and again, the liberals held their ground.

It was at that moment that I learned a new meaning for the term "liberal." On May 9th, the liberals were heroic.


The Rev. Matthew Lawrence
Chaplain, Canterbury House
Director, Institute for Public Theology