You’re probably familiar with the Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church, a fringe religious group of anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-kindness-in-general people infamous for picketing at the funerals of fallen soldiers, protesting charitable organizations, showing up with hateful signs after national tragedies, and for being generally terrible, terrible people.

This weekend the WBC’s spokesperson announced their plans to picket at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

When six members of Westboro showed up at the University of Chicago to protest the school’s employment of Barack Obama, more than 100 students organized various counterprotests, which ran through the duration of WBC’s “visit.” Student events included a simultaneous picket featuring signs warning of America’s doom-by-figs, flyers deploring fig-eaters and speakers who told of God’s vengeance upon fig-loving nations (all sourced from a reference to evil figs in the book of Jeremiah). 

10 nonviolent ways to thwart a Westboro Baptist Church protest

(Source: theweek.com)