Relatively soon after the horrendous events at Charlottesville, which I have mentioned in a previous post, a similar protest went on at a college in Florida when Richard Spencer decided to speak at the campus. He is a strong Republican and is supported by Neo-Nazis, Alt-right members, and White Supremacists. Even the college officials maintain that they did not want him to speak on campus, but that they were legally obligated to do so. University of Florida officials were spending 500,000 dollars on security to make sure that nothing like what happened at Charlottesville happened on their campus.
Although five people were reportedly injured during the protest of Spencer's speech, overall, this was able to be a pretty peaceful protest, and the protesters were able to take Spencer's attention away from whatever he came there to say, seeing as he reportedly conversed with the crowd by saying things like. 'I’m not going home,' and 'We are stronger than you and you all know it!'
According to Zachary Fagenson of Reuters, 'He appeared to have few supporters in the crowd. About 15 white men, all dressed in white shirts and khaki pants.' which shows that he was speaking to a crowd of primarily people who did not want him there. Unfortunately, although in my opinion, someone who can be described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a radical white separatist whose goal is the establishment of a white ethno-state in North America.” should not have the right to speak on a college campus if the school itself and most of the students do not want him to, I applaud the school and the protesters for being able to keep their protest as safe as they could. Hopefully this protest can serve as a positive example for people looking to protest in the future, especially as the nation continues to use Charlottesville as a tragedy to learn from and not to repeat. Hopefully in the future people will be able to not injure one another either because it is still terrible that people were physically hurt at all during this protest.
What is also tragic about this whole event, even more so than the unfortunate injuries that a few people sustained is that there were white nationalists who were charged with attempted murder at this protest. While the single shot that was fired ended up not being deadly, it is still a tragedy that someone could have been murdered at yet another protest on a college campus. People really need to let peaceful protests stay peaceful and accept that sometimes their views will be challenged but that that is the point of a protest and you do nothing but make your own group look bad of you try to seriously injure or kill someone else. If you cannot handle staying peaceful at a protest, no matter what group you are supporting, you do not belong there.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-protests/protesters-to-white-nationalist-speaker-at-university-of-florida-go-home-nazis-idUSKBN1CO1BM
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article179941551.html
