Students at Hele’s School in Plympton have taken part in a global video conference focused on how to respond to hatred and discrimination.
Religious Studies students at Hele’s were invited to participate in a one-off Generation Global video conference welcoming Dave Fortier.
Dave was a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing, and also the founder of One World Strong. The topic of the video conference was ‘Responding to Hate’ and students from the Plympton based school hooked up with students from Cranford Community College, Hounslow and Harlem Renaissance High School in New York.
The video conference began with Dave sharing his experience of the bombing at the end of the Boston marathon in 2013 and how this led him, and other survivors, to set up their charity One World Strong.
Students were then able to ask Dave any question they wanted. These questions explored the emotional as well as physical trauma people suffer after terrorist attacks, how Dave keeps himself focused and balanced doing this sort of work, how organisations can work to prevent extremism as well as deal with the fallout from terrorist attacks, whether this has changed his views of issues such as gun ownership and whether terrorists deserve our condemnation or pity.
In his responses, Dave stressed the importance of support networks, the power of narratives (especially as an antidote to extremist narratives and objectives), and he challenged the options of pity or condemnation, explaining he felt it was a more complex matter.
Students went on to share their own experiences of hate in their communities. They heard about the recent ‘Punish A Muslim Day’: a hateful online campaign, how one student had his mother attacked for being Muslim, about minority groups being ‘second checked’, and finding it hard to secure employment.
Towards the end of the conference students explored together the tensions between free speech and hate speech and the responsibilities of the media to report good stories as well as the negative.
Emma Crosley, Religious Studies teacher at Hele’s commented
“We were delighted to be asked to take part in this video conference and I was humbled by listening to Dave’s experiences. It was invaluable for our students to listen to students from different cultures and cities to hear their experiences of hate crime where they live. Living in an area of the country that is less multi-cultural than most, it is essential for our students to understand the difficulties faced by other people and they showed real empathy and understanding in their responses.”
For more information on the work of One World Strong see their website
www.oneworldstrong.org/copy-of-our-story
