CONFLICT ON THE WASHINGTON MALL: THE RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH AND THE RESPONSIBILITY TO LISTEN IN THE AGE OF DEMAGOGUERY (original) (raw)

2021, Listening: A Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture

On Friday, Jan. 18, 2019, on the Washington Mall, three groups of protesters accidentally encountered each other. The groups included protesters from a group known as Black Hebrew Israelites, groups of Americans of African heritage who believe that they are the descendants of the ancient Israelites. Another group included attendees of the Indigenous People's March, an event to draw attention to injustices against indigenous peoples within the U.S. and around the world. The third group was composed of Catholic high school students from Kentucky attending the anti-abortion March for Life, a March held annually since 1974. Each of these groups were present on the Mall for highly scripted political action: daylong events with scheduled speakers, designated routes for marching, and a remarkable homogeneity of identity and purpose. Each of these groups were in a space with like-minded others, until they converged on the Mall together. There, their encounter with each other at day's end was not intended; their interaction was unscripted, and it was, in a way, a microcosm of our public sphere today. According to accounts, 1 a half a dozen Black Hebrew Israelites had been goading the Indigenous People's marchers and the Covington high schoolers. The Black Hebrew Israelites used vulgar, misogynist, homophobic, and racist language as they yelled at the other groups for nearly an hour. Covington students, meanwhile, heckled passing women with chants of "MAGA" and "Build the wall" and returned some of the hateful language from the Black Hebrew Israelites (for example, returning hateful speech about the nature of their conception, insultingly, as the products of rape and incest with assertions that "it's not rape if you enjoy it"). After the Indigenous People's March, Nathan Phillips, an elder with the Omaha Native American tribe, positioned himself physically between the two groups. In that space, he performed a traditional drum chant in the hopes of defusing the tension between the two groups-a gesture that was, for Phillips, infused with meaning of his culture (as Phillips told Sara Sidner of CNN, in "Native American elder Nathan Phillips, in his own words," "we need to use the drum, use our prayer and bring a balance, bring a calming to the situation"). 2 Arguably, I think, that meaning was largely lost on the Covington students and the Black Hebrew Israelites, who simply felt that a third party was physically entering their space with banging and noises. Surveying the accounts of these events and watching video taken by multiple bystanders, I have come to the conclusion that popular accounts of these events typically