Picnic pushes message of inclusion before Saturday White Lives Matter rally
MURFREESBORO — Hundreds of community members from different faiths and walks of life gathered Sunday afternoon in Barfield Crescent Park to mark the two-year anniversary of the first Love Your Neighbor Picnic.
The event arrived just before the controversial League of the South’s White Lives Matter rally set for Saturday on the Murfreesboro and Shelbyville public squares.
“We’re an interfaith fellowship so … activities like the Love Your Neighbor potluck and Murfreesboro Loves is really in the spirit of what we believe and we want to be here and support it as much as we can,” said Allie Becker, who was working on button badges alongside fellow members of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Murfreesboro members.
While Becker and a group from UUFM colored messages that will be given out during a peaceful counter-protest by #MurfreesboroLoves at the park from 4-6 p.m. Saturday, other groups made picket signs with peaceful messages such as “No room for hate” and “God Loves Everyone.”
In addition to sign making, bumper stickers were being sold for the #MurfreesboroLoves campaign.
“It’s really important that things like this are happening in our community, especially in the face of white supremacy,” Becker said.
The first picnic was held in 2015 after a hate group blasted social media encouraging people to protest at the
Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. So the Murfreesboro Cold Patrol and Murfreesboro Muslim Youth banded together to host the inaugural event.
The picnic has grown exponentially since then, bringing new faces every time, including Florence Smith and Katie Wilson, representing the Murfreesboro Branch of the NAACP.
“This is a beautiful scene to see all the different people come together no matter what the race or nationality,” Wilson said. “They are coming to love their neighbor, and I like that slogan.”
As children darted around the field playing soccer and tossing footballs, a group of women cooked handmade flat bread on a grill while the crowd sampled from a food buffet table that stretched the entire length of the pavilion
Nothing brings people together like a meal, said Abdou Kattih, director of the Murfreesboro Muslim Youth.
“We believe it brings people together that don’t know each other that well. We believe more knowledge is power and it leads to more peace,” said Kattih, who
“This is a beautiful scene to see all the different people come together no matter what the race or nationality. They are coming to love their neighbor, and I like that slogan.”
— KATIE WILSON, WITH THE MURFREESBORO BRANCH OF THE NAACP
co-organizes the event with Murfreesboro Cold Patrol co-founder Jason Bennett. “The community here can show the United States that we can bring peace in a much more vocal way, rather than hate. That’s the whole idea.”
Jennifer Vannoy said she has been impressed with the way the movement has grown over the past two years in the “face of adversity.”
“It’s really incredible the way Murfreesboro keeps showing up in love. The people here join hands, they join hearts and they learn and grow from each other. Because every time hate tries to show its face in Murfreesboro, we rise up and we get better every single time,” Vannoy said.
Reach reporter Nancy De Gennaro at 615-278-5148 or degennaro@ dnj.com, and follow her on Twitter @NanDeGennaro.