It started off as a peaceful protest. He had gone to share a message of love and acceptance. (He said that he wanted to prove that love trumps hate.) Even though he didn’t support the same political aspirations as most of the crowd, he shared some of their views. He was disappointed with the current administration and was disgruntled with the establishment. Like the crowd, he felt it was time for an outsider to rise up and make the nation great again.



Now, I should be honest and say that my friend — prior to all the controversy — had a pretty big following. A lot of people liked and shared what he said. He was relatively well-known and had a relatively large amount of influence. And he was trying to use that influence to start a movement. He wanted to change the system.

Why? Because unlike most of the crowd, he had a great deal of sympathy for the oppressed — women, minorities, and immigrants. (My friend was a refugee from the Middle East.) He worried about what might happen if he didn’t take a stand against the violent rhetoric he had been hearing. So he went into the chaos, into the crowd, and he stood. That is when things got ugly.

Needless to say, his message was not well received. Of course, he knew this would happen. Heck, he had been making comments about tearing down walls, not building them. He wanted to let people in; they wanted to keep people out. He knew it would be tense. But I don’t think he knew it would get as bad as it did.

He was pushed and slapped and spit on as he made his way through the crowd. One guy mocked him for his religion and another guy called him a terrorist. Then it got really, really bad. The “aspiring politician” called him out in front of everybody. He compared my friend to a murderer, an enemy of the state. And the saddest part? When he did that, the crowd went crazy. They began chanting…

“Crucify him! Crucify him!”

He died a few hours later.





—

Image by Steve Rhodes.

