I finally had a perfect day at the free speech zone and it was surreal

Last Tuesday I was walking past the campus quad and saw this guy with a megaphone yelling about pineapple on pizza being a human rights violation. I thought here we go again, another day of shouting matches and people recording each other. But then this student club set up a table with free donuts and coffee right next to him and just started handing out snacks to anyone who stopped. The megaphone guy kept yelling but people were just eating donuts and laughing. A girl from the club walked up and handed him a glazed donut and he actually stopped yelling and took a bite. For about 20 minutes the whole quad was quiet except for chewing and a few jokes. Has anyone else seen a protest or speech thing just dissolve into everyone eating pastries together?

3 comments

3 Comments

ward.kim6d ago

I have to push back on this whole "everyone eating pastries together" being a good thing. You said the guy with the megaphone was "yelling about pineapple on pizza being a human rights violation" and that sounds like a serious free speech issue to me. What happened next was actually a polite way of shutting him down. Giving him a donut and getting him to stop talking isn't some heartwarming moment. It is a way of silencing someone whose opinion you disagree with, just using baked goods instead of force. Free speech zones are already a compromise, and when we turn protests into social hour over donuts, we are telling people their views are only welcome if they are quiet and agreeable. I think we should let people yell about whatever they want, even if it sounds ridiculous. Otherwise we are just sugarcoating the whole idea of free expression.

the_susan4d ago

Why we gotta pretend this is a free speech issue tho? The guy was yelling about pizza toppings, not politics. Sometimes a donut is just a donut, not a conspiracy to silence someone.

phoenix_bailey6d ago

@ward.kim makes a solid point, but turning a protest into a donut party doesn't have to mean silencing someone if they chose to join in themselves. Isn't it possible the guy just realized he was hungry and the whole thing was more humanizing than dismissive?