Social Media Meets Westboro

Rage has filled my heart over the past couple of days because of the way that the Westboro Baptist Church spreads their agenda. Have you heard of Westboro Baptist Church? Basically, Westboro is a church based out of Kansas that has hate filled in their heart. Most of the members of the church are related, and they all follow their leader, Fred Phelps. Long story short, they protests at military funerals, gay events, political functions, etc. However, their message is so extreme and judgemental that I don't understand how they think that condemning people to hell is positive in God's eyes.

Recently, Spc. Gary L. Nelson III, a 20-year old Woodstock native, was laid to rest. Although this was a sad time for family and friends, worse news came even later. The Westboro Baptist Church had made it known that they would be protesting the funeral. Because I have been in Georgia all of my life, I know how seriously Georgia citizens take their faith and religious morals. Disturbing a funeral in any way is already disrespectful, but for Westboro to interrupt a funeral with hate signs and messages is pure evil.

I had not heard anything about this prior to Wednesday of last week. One day while on Facebook I began to notice some of my friends Facebook statuses talking about a local soldier whose funeral was going to be invaded by the Westboro Baptist Church. There was a Facebook group created called "Operation Block Westboro," and many people spread the word via Twitter. We've talked about the social media revolution in  Egypt, but it was cool to see how social media affected a local cause. People soon began to show their support via social media. Thankfully, on the day of the funeral there were hundreds of supporters, and city officials ready to stop Westboro from spreading their hate.

So what was the result of the Operation Block Westboro vs. Westboro Baptist Church? Let's just say that Westboro did not show up at the funeral. Could it be because of the large number of supporters that were made aware of the situation via social media? It could be, but we don't know what actually stopped Westboro from showing up. Nevertheless, although all of this news was spreading rapidly through new new media (blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.), I still did not see an official news report until yesterday on WSB-TV. It did not mention the fact that Westboro was supposed to show, but rather just showed the supporters. However, an article published in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution clearly expressed how social media may have been the reason why Westboro was a no-show.

Article in AJC talking about Spc. Gary L. Nelson III