A united front on ending bigotry

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT BEACH -- A retired police officer from Boston delivered a frank

talk with a powerful anti-hate message to Newport Harbor High School

students Tuesday.

“All haters are cowards,” said Bill Johnston, who spoke at the school in

commemoration of Unity Month. Johnston at one time was assigned to the

hate-crime unit of the Boston Police Department.

Many people may not have heard of Unity Month. That’s because they made

it up at Newport Harbor.

Sponsored by the international ambassadors club, it began five years ago

as Unity Week. This year, it has been expanded to encompass a month.

Students at Newport Harbor are guilty most often of ignoring foreign

students and making them feel invisible, teacher Joe Robinson said.

“There are more than 400 foreign-born students in this school,” said Mike

Landers, student coordinator of Unity Month.

Johnston is part of a national organization called Facing History and

Ourselves, which asks students of diverse backgrounds to examine racism,

prejudice and anti-Semitism in hopes of creating a more humane citizenry.

Johnston gave graphic testimonial of incidents he saw and experienced

prior to ever joining the hate-crime unit in Boston.

Working as a decoy in the city, Johnston was mugged many a time.

“You do not have to be different, just merely perceived as different,” he

told students. “All the injuries I received, I received acting as a decoy

coming out of a gay bar.”

When he was grabbed exiting a straight bar, he said, he was roughed up

only enough for criminals to get his money, whereas exiting a gay bar, he

had his teeth knocked out and was stabbed twice.

Still, he said, he was not sensitive to it.

It was not until he watched an African American family torn apart by

slurs and broken windows that he understood the effect the acts he had

always considered “Mickey Mouse crimes” had on the victims.

“It wasn’t vandalism -- it was terrorism,” he said.

Anat Herzog, student president of the ambassadors club, said with the

whole school hearing the presentation, if just one student listens, it

would be worth all the trouble and expense.

Judging by the reaction of junior Dan Marteski, it was money well spent.

“I think it was really powerful,” he said. “It had a big impact. He had a

lot to say. There were a lot of examples. Every word he said was really

powerful. Other speakers come and go ...”

Marteski and several of his fellow students said they didn’t feel these

types of things really happened at Newport Harbor -- too much.

Johnston compared the hate to cancer and implored students to drop the

prejudices and slurs that often hurt people just as much as sticks and

stones can hurt their bones.

“Eliminate those words from your vocabulary,” Johnston told students.

“I’m not just talking about the words that roll off your tongue, but the

ones that are rolling around in your head.”