Civility? Screw that, heckling protesters jeer at Newton forum on prejudice

The Globe reports angry, booing, hissing adults disrupted a forum on prejudice in the city, led by a long-time local Angry Man who used the session to repeat his accusations that Newton schools are anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

At points, it devolved into a forum where Jewish activists heckled an African-American woman who spoke of her son being called a vulgar racist slur at school, where the superintendent of schools was booed and needed a police escort to his car, and where a woman held a sign reading: "It’s not prejudice, it’s anti-Semitism."

Village 14 has a video of the forum (starts at 0:17; audience questions start at 1:16:00, with a woman who says her family died in the Holocaust and she just can't even with the people complaining about racism). At 1:32, you can watch the protesters interrupt a black woman talking about how her son has been called the N-word in a Newton school.

A student at Newton South High School, who also attended the session, reacts:

When you fight this hatred with more hatred, you are the problem. You think that because you have been persecuted, and you have been victimized, that you are above tolerance and education. Your own painful experiences do not justify this kind of behavior. ...

When a group of teenagers are more thoughtful, more kind, more articulate, and more forgiving than you are in all your bitterness and ignorance and stubbornness, perhaps it’s time to step back and take a little time to reflect.