General News Nathan Philliips, American Indian man harrassed at Lincoln Memorial

He came to a very public place and was presumably protesting something with his ceremony. People shouldn't protest if they aren't prepared for counter-protesters to pop up. Yea the kids were kind of obnoxious but they had every right to counter-protest whatever it was the guy was doing. They never attacked him, or tried to stop him - all they did was stand around him making faces which is their right in a public place like that. Him being a veteran has nothing to do with this either, it's not like any of the kids even knew that.

 

Which means absolutely nothing in this situation. People shouldn't ever be considered differently because of their race, which includes benefiting from it. Whether it happened to a white, black, or native American guy shouldn't matter or impact the situation at all.

 

Forget being a decent human being right? Why come in here and defend it?

 

Because the kids are being unfairly attacked all over the place on other sites when they did nothing illegal or wrong. Rude yes, but people are trying to paint them as horrible people when they didn't even do anything but stand there.

Also, if you watch the full video which isn't in the link in this thread, the kids never came up to Nathan... he came running up to them and inserted himself into the middle of their group for no apparent reason (he claims he was trying to pacify a separate argument) but he still came up to them and started beating his drum in their faces, not the other way around.

The kids are staring at him as a "wtf is this old man doing beating a drum in our face all of a sudden" type of thing, not to harass him for being native American. The making faces stuff came later.

 

It was very disappointing. There has been so much back and forth today on social media about it. Based on everything I’ve seen, it seems that the students were being very disrespectful and there was a lot of commotion. Mr. Phillips continued on with his ritual chant and in the process approached the group. They continued mocking him, and one refused to step aside for him to pass. I’m not sure what’s going to be done, if anything. They are trying to set it up in a way to excuse the boys behavior (even though there is no excuse).


*side note: I find it very interesting/insane an all boys high school would go on an annual trip every year to participate in a march about policing women’s bodies!

 

I like how you said the students were being disrespectful, yet completely leave out the part where even Nathan says the students were being harassed by Black Israelite protesters before he even got there. From an NBC story: "Phillips said some of the members of the Black Hebrew group were also acting up, "saying some harsh things" and that one member spit in the direction of the Catholic students."

What actually happened is the students and black hebrews got into some sort of christian vs. jew religious debate, the black hebrews started insulting the kids and the bible, the students started chanting school slogans and "build the wall", and then the native American group inserted themselves into it and got turned on by both sides.

It's more convenient to just blame the white Republican kids and accuse them of being racist according to so many people though right...

Abortion protests have nothing to do with women's bodies, it has to do with preventing father's children from being killed often against their will just because the woman wants it that way.

 

"Kind of obnoxious". It seems to me that bullying occurred. I would never disrespect an elder by making funny faces towards any elder. Lack of respect for the diversity of others is a diminished economic plan.

 

The kids were being bullied by the black Hebrew group before that even happened, so of course they're going to be aggressive towards another random person that showed up in front of them. Now that I've read more about the story from various sources, it seems the black Hebrew group was yelling racial and religious insults at both the white kids and the native American group before all three groups combined into one argument. They were calling the kids crackers, insulting the bible, telling the native Americans to go back to the reservation etc.

So ironically this entire situation was caused by the only group not being talked about on the news....the black Hebrews who started it by taunting both of the other sides.