Misguided or Intentional?: 
An Update on the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine's Support for Hate Speech

Diversity Education has a very important role in any Medical Program.  Lifestyles vary greatly between communities, particularly in the United States.  This can impact the social stigma of a diagnosis, the approach individuals take to an overall healthy lifestyle, or how a treatment plan can be realistically implemented.  Also, there is great value in celebrating the accomplishments of the diverse communities which compose the United States. 

On Wednesday March 25th, Dr. Velma Scantlebury was honored by PCOM as the first African-American female to perform organ transplant surgeries.  Her speech was entitled "Kidneys are Colorblind."  President Feldstein was present to honor her achievement.  We at No Haters At The Podium would like to join in congratulating Dr. Scantlebury on her achievements and for providing an inspiration to future physicians.

However, either Dr. Feldstein was not paying attention to her speech or he was not paying attention when signing off on paying Tim Wise over $7,500 to spew his hate towards the PCOM student body.  Perhaps this invitation was driven by other forces in the PCOM administration...perhaps not.

There is still time for Dr. Feldstein to do the right thing and cancel Tim Wise's speeches at PCOM on April 10th and 11th.  If he does not, we can only assume that Dr. Feldstein thinks that Jesus is an image of White Supremacy, that the disappearance of White people is to be cheered on and even encouraged, and that there is no African-American, Person of Color, or LGBT individual who is as capable as Tim Wise at addressing his students.

We will be glad to correct this assumption once Dr. Feldstein demonstrates with his actions that he does not hold these views.
-Dan Smith

How Can You Help?

We received an email from an anonymous stranger asking how she can help with our cause to end hate at the podium. First of all, to this individual: thanks for getting in touch! I would like to post a verbatim version of my response here, because this answer applies to everyone:

Thanks for getting in touch! Sorry for the late response. I don't check this email address as much as I should. We are just getting started, but we're growing quickly. We've already heard from people in multiple cities where Tim Wise is speaking during his current tour. I should clarify that we are not just against Tim Wise. We are against people who seek to profit from stoking racial tensions, especially white people who do this. Tim Wise just happens to be a very prominent example of this.

You ask how you can help. There are a number of ways. First, if you live in a city where Tim Wise is speaking you can help organize protest against him. We are basically just asking venues where he is speaking to disassociate themselves from him and cancel his speaking engagement. At the moment, there doesn't seem to be much incentive for venues to cancel. Probably they have to pay a hefty fee if they do. So in the long run, we hope to show that there are better people to speak on these topics than Tim Wise. We recommend hanging flyers and speaking to people directly. We have found that when we talk about Tim Wise with people on the street they have never heard of him and are outraged by what he says, so simply engaging with people is an effective way to raise awareness.

Second, if you are not in a city where Tim Wise is speaking then you can help in other ways. If you have graphic design skills, we could use assistance in developing flyers that we can provide to protesters in each city where he is speaking. Also, we could use writers for our blog. We would like our blog to include regular analysis of inflammatory statements by Tim Wise and others like him. There is much to be said, but so far we have not had time to fully document everything that could be said. In fact, there are many other people less famous who use the same tactics as Tim Wise and we would like to eventually start campaigns against them as well. It's truly unconscionable that people deliberately work to create racial tension and then profit from speaking out against the problems they have instigated. If you hear about people who do this, please let us know.

Lastly, and perhaps the most easy of ways to help, please share our Facebook page, blog, and Twitter account with people who you think might be interested in stopping hate at the podium. This is a new initiative, only started a few months ago, and while we are impressed with the progress we are making, we have not been very successful in getting the word out. For my part, I've been shocked at how my friends have completely ignored my requestes for them to pay attention to this cause. On the other hand, we have been hearing from a few brave people such as youself, who are looking to make a difference. So we are still pleased with the results thus far, and we believe that we can succeed!

Hope to hear from you soon,

Avi

If you have further questions please email us at nohatersatthepodium@gmail.com. We apologize in advance for delayed responses. We are an all volunteer organization.

Welcome BMPC Congregants

We are sorry to inform you that your Church has invited the bigot Tim Wise to address your Congregation. Tim Wise has referred to Jesus as a symbol of White Supremacy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPzDZYTvAu8), has called for the murder of Tea Partiers and has accused Glenn Greenwald and Cornel West of being apologists for White Supremacy and Social Darwinism (see our previous posts).
In other words, Tim Wise is unhinged.
There are 1,000 of distinguished speakers who can address the very serious problem of racism. We would encourage BMPC to continue to address this problem but without legitimizing the bigotry and hatred propagated by Tim Wise.
We encourage you to look into his past yourselves and if you agree with us, please call Rev. Agnes Norfleet at (610) 525 2821, extension 8866, and ask her to cancel Tim Wise's visit.
Dan Smith

We had a great response to our call for volunteers for exposing Tim Wise to the community. 

Here is the flyer we will be passing out. 
Feel free to print this picture out and pass it out at your church this Easter, even if you haven't written to us.  While you're at it, take a picture like the those we posted earlier and we will retweet it.  We encourage you not to identify yourself in the photo considering that Tim Wise has called on his supporters to commit violence in the past (and at times they have followed his orders).

Thank you for waking your neighbors up!
-Dan Smith

Student Outreach at PCOM to #StopTimWise

Thanks to the volunteers who passed out over 200 flyers to students and placed them on cars today at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.  The seasoned activists who went were amazed that every person who was handed a flyer read it with respect and curiosity.  The flyer included basic information about the upcoming Tim Wise event, one of his calls for the extinction of White people, as well as an article by an African-American feminist critic of Tim Wise.  Some students even returned to ask how they can help the campaign.  

The Campaign to #StopTimWise has also personally reached out to dozens of Osteopaths in the Philadelphia Metropolitan area to pass along information about how their alma mater is spending donor money on hate speech.  The fact is that the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine has a reservoir of good will in the community, but they cannot pay a bigot like Tim Wise to harangue their students without dipping into that reservoir.  The doctors who were available to comment are upset that the reputation of their school will be sullied for the narrow political goals of radicals who are not even Doctors within the administration.  Their responses can be summed up as basically, "Dr. Feldstein should know better."

Nearly 100 Osteopaths who could not be reached personally have been left voicemails and sent letters.  So far, NoHatersAtThePodium has limited its campaign against the Tim Wise speech at PCOM to the inner circle of students and alumni.  If PCOM does not cancel this event by the end of the week, we will reach out to the public at large.  We hope that Dr. Feldstein will listen to reason.

If you are interested in volunteering for our public outreach campaign sceduled to begin this weekend, write to nohatersatthepodium@gmail.com 

Our materials for public distribution will be posted soon.  Until then, please spread the word to your fellow students and alumni at PCOM.  

Canvassing PCOM

Volunteers with NoHatersAtThePodium placed flyers on windshields at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.  Students who read the flyers were universally receptive.  None of them were aware that PCOM had invited Tim Wise and were disgusted at the thought of their tuition subsidizing hate speech, especially considering that some will graduate with about $300,000 in debt.  Tim Wise earns $7,500 per speech (not including travel and lodging expenses) and will be discussing the issue of economic fairness...how ironic.

Thanks to the volunteers who went out today and a very special thanks to the students who encouraged them and shared their gratitude for having this issue brought to their attention.  

If you would like to help #StopTimWise, please participate in our social media campaign on Twitter and FaceBook.

If you would like to join the fun and volunteer, then write to us at nohatersatthepodium@gmail.com or simply print out the flyer here and start posting it around campus.

There are thousands of great doctors who have given of their time and skills to help impoverished and marginalized communities.  Please call President Feldstein (215-871-6800) and ask him to invite true humanitarians to speak about social justice in medicine...rather than this hatemonger who never even studied medicine.

Stop Tim Wise Campaign Now on Facebook!

The Stop Tim Wise campaign is now on Facebook here. You can like the page to receive updates in your Facebook feed as well as make comments.

To reiterate, the Stop Tim Wise campaign exists because Tim Wise regularly makes incendiary comments regarding race to increase racial tensions and then profits from speaking tours and selling books about racism. Our organization, No Haters At The Podium seeks to bring attention to Wise's unethical practices and empower people to reject the tactics used by Wise and others like him. We hope to dissuade venues from hosting Tim Wise as a speaker. There many alternatives better suited to speak on the subjects of racial disparity, economic fairness, and social justice. We hope that venues interested in discussing such topics will choose speakers and leaders who do not incite hatred.

This is a new initiative that is entirely facilitated by the work of volunteers. Unlike Tim Wise, we do not make a profit from our work, but we still believe it is important enough to sacrifice time and energy to achieve a true and holistic racial reconciliation. Despite our newness, we anticipate results very soon. If you want more information about how you can help to protest hatred at the podium please email us at nohatersatthepodium@gmail.com. For now, stay tuned because we will be providing resources you can use if Tim Wise is invited to speak in your town.

No Haters at the Podium Launches First Campaign

No Haters at the Podium is a broad coalition of activists who believe that speakers calling for or cheering on the demise of any racial, ethnic, or religious group must be excluded from the public sphere.  Despite the many strides made in the field of civil rights and mutual respect, there are still speakers and professors who regularly express hatred toward numerous groups for their immutable characteristics and/or their faith.  Our first campaign is to Stop the prominent Hater Tim Wise.  Below are a small sample of the highlights from his hate screeds as well as a plan of action to Stop Tim Wise.

Earning a 6-figure Salary from National Hate Speech Tours

One of the most flagrant Haters at the Podium is Tim Wise.  He typically earns $7,500 per speaking engagement plus transport and lodging.  He has spoken to hundreds of university audiences around the United States.

Enemies All Around

Tim Wise has attacked Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the NSA Mass Surveillance story, and Cornel West, America's leading African-American public intellectual, for "empowering the reactionary, white supremacist, Social Darwinists of this culture."

Not limiting his hatred to Progressives, he has called for the shooting of Tea Partiers on election day. 

Tim Wise and his Racist Friends

Tim Wise has used his public position to defend Ward Churchill.  Ward Churchill wrote that the people who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were "Little Eichmann's" who deserved to be murdered.  Churchill was trying to draw a moral equivalency between trading bonds at Cantor Fitzgerald and organizing the train schedules delivering Jews to Nazi concentration camps.  Tim Wise was one of the few "progressives" to see the connection.

Tim Wise, defended Churchill's lunatic claims in the only way he knew how.  Wise claimed that “White America, in the main, has no moral center to which one can appeal any longer, if it ever did.” The only explanation for the reaction against Churchill's excuse for the mass murder of nearly 3,000 noncombatants, which included victims from 90 countries, was not the content of Churchill's article but "the notion that a person of color and an Indian no less, should dare to condemn the American empire." 

It should be noted, Ward Churchill, a European-American, fabricated his American Indian heritage when applying for his former post as Professor of Ethnic and Indian Studies at UC Boulder.  Churchill has been denounced by the American Indian Movement, the leading activist organization uniting American Indians from across the US, for his false (and inconsistent) claims of tribal affiliation and heritage as well as for damaging the good will that the public feels toward American Indians while pursuing his bloodthirsty agenda.  

Tim Wise's Solution for Social Justice

While Tim Wise chases imaginary Klansmen into the Princeton faculty lounge and shills for advocates of terrorism, the most important issues facing the US and the world go ignored during his very expensive speeches.  Rather, students are told that "White People have always been the bad guys."  And this simplistic view of historical injustice will be resolved by the dying off of White Americans..."you're on the endangered list. And unlike, say the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving."  Realizing he went too far for his own good in this article, he has since re-edited and removed this article from his own site.

The SPLC draws a bright line regarding hate groups, "all hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics." Tim Wise has become that which he always professed to have worked against...he attacks and maligns an entire class of people, claims they are incapable of moral judgement, and cheers on their extinction because of their immutable characteristics.

Stop Tim Wise

It is up to us to Stop Tim Wise.  We encourage people of good conscience, whatever their political stripe, to join this nonviolent movement to encourage Universities, Places of Worship, NGOs, and Corporations to have this simple policy in place: No Haters at the Podium:

      1) Stop paying Tim Wise

      2) Stop giving Tim Wise a public podium to address the public

      3) Stop legitimizing Hate by promoting Tim Wise's screeds in the classroom 

      4) Make the SPLC add Tim Wise to their list of Haters

No Haters at the Podium at the Center of a National Campaign

This blog will be a rallying point for activists across the country looking to stop Tim Wise.  Local activists are needed in each area where Tim Wise will speak, and experienced activists can advise on strategies for shaming the decision makers capable of cancelling his visits.  We will provide customized materials to educate the public on Tim Wise's serial history of pathological Hate at the request of local activists.  Please feel free to reach out.  We need your help to win.