ThinkProgress has a simultaneously encouraging but also depressing story of a man who wanted to teach his children compassion by housing a family of immigrants only to have his family and his livelihood attacked by conservative racists.
After Mark Lane’s son asked him why people were yelling at busloads of immigrant children (I covered the incident referred to here), Lane and his wife decided to host a family of four immigrants from Guatemala.
I won’t say what happened next will surprise you because it probably won’t.
But when word spread that Lane was hosting the family, people viciously attacked him online with a Facebook page calling for a boycott of his business, Poppa’s Fresh Fish Company. One commentator on the now-defunct Facebook page recommended that he “needs a serious beating in front of his customers. But then he serves crap food. His establishment is rat infested and smells like raw sewage.” Lane said that he and his family have been also receiving death threats, which he said he has now reported to the local police department’s hate crime division and even the Department of Justice.
The good news is the attacks on his business and his family seem to have backfired, but it’s still astonishing that people have free time in their lives to hound other human beings for housing other human beings. And I’m sure at least some of them identify as “good Christians.”
The phrase “get a life” is applicable as is “stop being a xenophobic shitbag.”
If you live in the San Diego area, consider giving business to Poppa’s Fresh Fish.