May 23, 2018 04:06 PM UTC

Haters Provoke Outpouring of Love in Broomfield

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• by: Colorado Pols

A happy ending to the unsavory story we noted a couple of days ago, as Jennifer Rios of the Boulder Daily Camera reports:

When Broomfield residents learned that Broomfield High School was a possible target of hate speech and protest, more than 600 counter-protesters showed up.

A “Community Hug” was created in response to a rumored visit from Westboro Baptist Church members, who said they would be in Broomfield at 2:30 p.m. They never arrived — a common tactic of the small family band based in Topeka, Kansas, that advocates hate against public schools, LGBTQ individuals, and the U.S. military.

Broomfield police showed up at 11 a.m.; community members began arriving at 12:30 p.m., but those who sparked the event never showed up.

Local residents linked arms to surround the campus of Broomfield High School, creating a physical barrier against a protest that failed to materialize. It’s quite possible that the pre-event lampooning of the anti-everything protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in the media, in which they learned the protest had been scheduled for the wrong day, caused them to abort. Or maybe they just didn’t have the gas money to drive to Boulder from Topeka.

Either way, in the end there was absolutely nothing to see in Broomfield–except hundreds of local residents who turned out just to make everybody knows this miserable traveling band of inbred misanthropes in no way represents the people who live here.

And if that’s the the effect they have, we invite Westboro Baptist to threaten and then not show up anytime.