Spurred by subway attack, students rally against hate

By Kirsten Andelman, Globe Correspondent

Cambridge - At a brick kiosk in Central Square, near a spot where social activists used to rage against perceived injustices, about 40 middle-school students yesterday demanded an end to what they said was the hatred that led to an attack on a Boston high school student at a subway stop last month.

"Say no to hate! Say no to hate!" they chanted as they boarded a Red Line car bound for Park Street station in Boston, stopping to hand out leaflets and gather signatures on a petition condemning the attack.

The protest by seventh- and eighth-graders from the city's Graham and Parks School was aimed at the Jan. 28 assault on a Boston High School student at the New England Medical Center subway stop, who had been seen holding hands with another girl at school.

Officials are investigating whether antigay sentiments were involved. It was later reported that the victim was from Morocco and grew up in a culture where hand-holding among schoolgirls is customary. Three students have been charged in the attack.

After reading about the attack in a humanities course, part of a section called Justice and Dissent, students began organizing the Ride Against Hate. They spent the last week printing leaflets, writing press releases, contacting public safety officials and politicians and painting signs with slogans like "No More Bystanders" and "If I Was Gay Would You Come and Beat Me?"

"We learned how in the Holocaust people didn't do anything, that they said they didn't know what was going on," said seventh-grader Rosa Gilmore as she rode toward Kendall Square. "Well, we see what's going on and we want to do something."

The protesters had been studying the Holocaust and hate crimes in the United States, and a new class has been scheduled on the Civil Rights movement.

"We had read a lot of articles about hate crimes, and we were sort of ticked off," said seventh-grader George Krebbs, who said he missed a lot of recesses to write press releases and fine-tune the speech he read in Central Square and again outside of the Park Street subway station.

Seventh-grader Sam Francois, who organized the protest, said the lesson from the Holocaust is that individuals must stand up to protect others in their community, and that silence is the voice of complicity.

"I think if you let the little stuff go by, then you let the big stuff go by," he said as he passed out leaflets to subway riders.

Also at the rally was Representative Jarrett Barrios, a Cambridge Democrat.

"It's an extraordinary realization for seventh and eighth-graders to see that anti-Semitism in the 30s is at bottom like homophobia in the new millennium," Barrios said.

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