Ok folks so I was on the ground for the NYC "Anti-Sharia March" and boy was it exciting to be in person and on the ground as a citizen in the greatest city on Earth during a protest. I have to say this is my first official protest that I took part in and as such I did not want to water down the experience by limiting myself to the sideline as a member of the PRESS so instead I decided to just join the group and weave myself into and out of crowds to see what some of the voices were on the ground.
In the name of respect and safety I will not be posting anyones pictures, including my own, as I do not want to be responsible for anyone being doxxed or worse, hurt, because of their opinions. Whether we agree with one another is not important, it is the freedom to exchange ideas peacefully that I think is the greatest right we have and the biggest threat to our society, in losing that right.
So after paying my train ticket into the city and then walking to the destination that was online I found that the "march" ended up being a lot larger in size than I had thought it would be. I suppose there were a lot of people who simply wanted to see what was going to happen and showed up. In fact many of the people I spoke to were there not because they were Muslim or because they were Anti-Sharia but because they wanted to simply watch a traincrash and see what was going to conspire.
First I took my place on the side of the MAGA-wearing Anti-Sharia Protesters who were very patriotic and in my experience, genuinely feel it was dangerous to accept Sharia into our country and furthermore, to import people whose wishes are to implement this law within our borders. Ideologically this is where I also stand. I have no hate towards Muslims whatsoever but I do think there is a very big danger in letting a lot of unvetted refugees into our country with the current state of things. To me it would be better to limit the 'refugees' coming in than to have coordinated terrorist attacks and have Muslims blanket blamed for them and worse, to be treated as second class citizens, possibly rounded up into camps, a la WWII Japanese Camps, when they are genuinely peaceful people. Speaking to the crowd and seeing the signs held up mainly focused on this, as well as other points specific to Sharia Law itself, like how it denies women's rights and the rights of the 🏳️🌈 community.
The location lends itself very easily to the type of Leftist ideology that is inherently anti-Trump and anti-Republican but in this instance I saw a sort of amalgamation of "Far-Right/Alt-Right" and "Leftist" groups joining together against this set of values coming into the United States of America 🇺🇸. It seems as though Sharia Law is one thing the left and right can agree on and I think there were many people who came out of the day respecting the other side a lot more. Despite counter protests I think this event was mostly positive and a good thing for America.
So I will just go down a list of some interactions I had with some people and, trying to transcribe from my phones voice recorder, will try to quote them as accurately as possible. I will go in chronological order as that is the order of my appearance there and also the order at which I moved from one group to the next.
Firstly I landed myself in Patriotland. This is not Boston so no Red Socks or Tom Brady, but Red, White and Blue was very prevalent. People wore the typical "Red, Trump, MAGA" hats and "Trump-Pence 2016" T-Shirts as well as holding signs saying things like "No Sharia Law Today or Any Day, Here or Anywhere", "Sharia Law Hurts Women", "Sharia Law Kills Gays", "Sharia is Evil", to more I would say inflammatory signs such as "Mohammed Married a 6-Year Old Girl, The Koran preaches Death to ALL Infidels #NOTMYPROPHET!" (Which I thought was typical of other signs in the area. These signs seemed to not be anti-Sharia Law so much as anti-Islam in the USA and so I asked the man with the sign what he thought about the protest and what his sign meant. Here is some of that conversation, again, transcribing from iPhone voice recorder, as I did not clear out space for video (I am stupid and could have got 4K video and didn't);
"So I see your sign here is there anything that you would like to say to people in addition to this ?"
" Sharia law is not compatible with the West, it's believers should never come to America, he (Mohammed/The Koran, presumably) preaches death to all non-Muslims, it encourages the complete destruction of our bill of rights, which is already under attack, these are just people that do not have the same values, do not share the same values, as the rest of us here."
"You say people, do you see Muslims as a group being for, or Pro, Sharia Law?"
"Absolutely I do, absolutely. I think you have a lot of people that are Muslims and a lot of people that are not Muslims, but want to stick up for Muslims and they say that, "oh not all Muslims are terrorists, not all Muslims are violent, not all Muslims follow Sharia Law", even though Islam is Sharia, Sharia is Islam, and then you have other Muslims that refuse to denounce, refuse to denounce any terrorist group or terrorist attacks in the name of Islam and speak out of both sides of their mouth and, in fact, Sharia Law sees it as not a sin to lie so long as you are doing so to promote Sharia Law and to promote Islam in the pursuit of killing infidels and that is anyone that is not a Muslim and does not follow Sharia and that is where you see Muslims themselves being blown up, having acid thrown in their face, being raped, all of these things that we see not only in the Muslim world, but also coming to Europe and I, for one, do not want to see it come to America. If it comes to America it will be the start of a Civil War and I don't want to see that, as a Veteran".
"I am also a Veteran and understand and can see your points. I also don't want to see a Civil War or more terrorist attacks in America. Do you think Islam is inherently violent?"
"(laughter) I don't think, I don't think I have to think, I think the proof is in the pudding. There's no other religion going around preaching to kill people that do not believe what they believe and teach their children that it is OK to murder other people simply because they are not like you. I think that in American history we have fought against those types of beliefs and for those people on the other side that would call me a racist or Islamophobic I would say 'is being Islamophobic not being pro gay rights? Brcause they want to stone you to death. Is it not being pro free speech, is it not being basically American? I mean come on!"
" OK I definitely see what you're saying and I actually do agree that Sharia Law and the Constitution of the United States do not jive, they don't mix well, and I do think that you cannot have two competing legal systems in one country and expect that the citizens will not fight each other about who is right and what is moral or acceptable in the US".
" exactly, exactly. This is an about Muslims being bad people, it really isn't, it is just simply we are not the same in terms of what we believe to be morally just and I think it will lead to more violence, more terror, more hate and more protests."
" OK well said, well thank you for your time, I really appreciate you taking a few minutes to give me your opinion and of course from a Veteran to a Veteran I don't need to say thank you for your service, it's implied, but thank you for standing up for the Constitution of the United States, I do appreciate that a lot and of course Free-Speech and your right to assemble peacefully, thank you."
So that was my first big "interview" of the day and I feel like I really hit a homerun with this man. He was about 6'2", probably late 40's, early 50's, I would say the typical Trump voter in 2016. This I thought was a really good example of the overall rhetoric I had been hearing at the rally/march. I continued on and spoke to a woman next, again late 40's-ish, white Trump T-Shirt, Make America Great Again hat, sunglasses, caucasian (presumably from her blonde hair). This is the transcription of that conversation;
"Hi how are you doing today,..."
"Hey, sho are you with, are you a writer for the NY Times or something?"
"(laughing) No definitely not. I am just an independent journalist covering this event and seeing if I could speak to some people here on this beautiful day exercising their Right to Free Speech"
" OK I had to make sure that you were all of those George Soros guys or something (laughter, looks at people around her)."
"No, no, I'm not a George Soros guy or part of any mainstream media network, I'm just here to see what people are saying and, really just want to know what people think...about Sharia law and why are you here today".
"OK well you know I think that for the most part Sharia Law is trying to kill us in the West. It's literally trying to kill us and take over. I mean you look at the way that they treat women, look at the way that they treat gay people, I mean they don't let women drive? You can't leave the religion without being murdered? That just isn't American."
" OK so you think that Sharia Law is a direct threat to the United States?"
"Of course it is! Of course it is. Look at all the people on TV that says, that say Sharia Law is coming to United States (air quotes). It will take over the world, we will all be under Sharia Law (all air quotes), do you want that?"
"I think what you have to say is fair, I definitely see many, I guess you would call them "Radical Islamists" (air quotes) on TV, YouTube and other outlets that do say that Sharia Law will come to America and basically I think these are the the Radical Muslims the people fear".
"Yeah the only problem is there's more of them than you think."
"Do you think the majority of Muslims believe in violence against non-believers?"
" I don't think they do it in public but I think that Islam and what they teach in mosques is a set of beliefs that is not according to the values of Americans. I think they don't want to be seen as a threat so they use more benign Muslims and now these "Social Justice Warriors" (air quotes) to call us all racists or xenophobes, whatever that means, I work on Wall Street I didn't study Communism at Columbia, sorry, to shame us into not speaking uo about the values we have in America, the values and the Rights that Americans have died to defend, you know? And I don't know I just think its a sort of smokescreen to get refugees in so they can create terror here and we will have a government that is weakened and a people that are really afraid, more so than right now, about terrorism, and then the Government will inevitably restrict our rights in the name of security."
"Wow that is actually very close to what I believe as far as the last part. I think more terrorist attacks in the US would definitely lead to the destruction of the Bill of Rights".
"yeah you know and that's not right, that's not something that we should allow to happen just because they claim that there are babies dying in the Middle East. There have been babies being killed in the Middle East for at least my entire generation if not earlier in the name of all sorts of things so I do not think that we should be following this line of propaganda that says we should except every refugee because they're all women and children, harmless, because I've seen a lot of refugees that said they were children and they were full grown men and just statistically I have seen figures that say 75% of all refugee children are actually adults".
"that is scary to think about terrorists coming in under the guise of refugees, especially as helpless children, and a government that would be OK with that".
"yeah and you know the thing is is our representatives and our politicians are just out for themselves, they don't really care, they live in a bubble, they don't really care what the people think and they don't have to live with the effects of terrorism, should it happen".
" I definitely agree with that, I think politicians are way too isolated from the lives of the average American. Well thank you for your time I definitely appreciate all the comments you made and I think that you have a lot of really good points and thank you for coming out today and exercising your First Amendment".
"Of course, if I don't do it now we might not be able to, especially as a woman, if we have Sharia Law in New York City, thank you good luck with your interviewing (laughs)."
So after that lady I feel like I got the "baby-boomer" perspective and decided to target someone who appeared to be my age or younger, possibly a Generation X'er or...a damn Millennial (what happened to Generation Y btw?). Here is a conversation I had with a young lady, probably early 20's, which is about ten years younger than me";
"hi how are you doing today?"
"hello am I on camera, wait, I gotta make sure my hair looks good (laughing)"
"No your hair looks fine and no I'm not videotaping I'm just using my phone to record conversations so I can write them for an article later on"
"OK who are you with?"
"more or less an independent journalist but have you ever heard of STEEMIT.com?"
"no I haven't what is that?"
"It's basically a website where anybody and everybody can write articles and blogs and post content and also make an income doing so. I definitely suggest you check it out, especially since you might be on there (laugh)."
"OK definitely, let me write that down, or type that in rather, so I can check it out later" (BONUS)
"so what brings you down here today?"
"well basically I am a feminist, or at least I consider myself a feminist somewhat, and I think that Sharia Law is terrible for women and I definitely don't want to see Sharia Law or any part of it coming to America anytime soon. Otherwise I would be raped or killed for simply wearing this tank top or wearing these shorts. It's ridiculous"
"OK so you think that your rights as an American would be infringed, I guess, should Sharia Law come within the borders of the United States?"
"Absolutely. Absolutely. I think Islam in general is not very fair to women or gay people and I don't think that America is the place for it. I think that those who want to follow Sharia Law should live in countries where Sharia Law is recognized"
"do you think Islam is a violent religion?"
"I don't think that all Muslims are terrorists or anything but I do think that those hard-core people who do believe in Sharia Law have already shown the world that they are violent and they are a threat to people that are not Muslim and don't believe what they believe so yeah I think Islam is a religion that promotes violence against non-Muslims and sh*t, even if you are Muslim they will blow you up too. But on the average and especially those who are born and raised in the USA I don't think that they are the types of people carrying out these terrorist attacks. I think it is mostly people from Middle Eastern Countries and I don't want that to be Uptown, Midtown or in Downtown N.Y.C. anytime soon."
" OK thank you for your time and be safe area and see if there's a lot of counter protest going on so I think I'm going to try to see some other sides of this argument and see what their points are because I don't really see other than calling people racist and Islam a phobia is what their reasoning can be to promote sharia law in the United States so once again take me time and check out steamit.com because I am probably going to put this interview up so follow me at (insert self-promotion)."
"OK I definitely will, thank you, be safe over there I don't know what they're going to think of you coming from this side. I think they might attack you or something (laughter) so be careful."
"Don't worry I'm a Marine (insert cocky smurk)."
" OK (laughter) well thank you for your service, I definitely support our Veterans."
"great, thank you, take care".
Ok so this is going to be "Part One" of I think two or three parts. I am going to try to separate this into the beginning and one side, then the other side and a conclusion. So it might be two parts or three depending on how many people I want to put into each side and also I wanted to cover the overall atmosphere and not just conversations because it was interesting to see this event as a whole both from either side and from an outside POV.
So hopefully you liked this article so far and I will be sure to continue writing the second part of the "Anti-Sharia Law March, N.Y.C." series today and hopefully post by this evening. I am going back and forth between the audio from my phone and trying to accurately transcribe verbatim the conversations and gestures from memory so forgive me for the time it is taking to release all this. It was a beautiful day for a protest. I try to remain objective but also do tend to agree with people and alternatively disagree to encourage a further depth of discussion but so far as a journalist I am still amateur hour so don't expect high production from me until I get a healthy amount of experience behind me.
Hopefully being close to New York City will mean I can cover many more events like Protests and rallys and anything else STEEMIT wants me to bring them. I did spend almost the entire day with this so please UPVOTE and REPOST if you liked this article and FOLLOW if you want to see more. I am just getting started here on STEEMIT so look forward to a lot more from me as, although I may not post every day, I am always writing something for future posting. Thanks for reading and check back in for Part 2 and the conclussion of my experience at the event yesterday. 