I’m a volunteer clinic defender at Planned Parenthood so i deal with street preachers a lot. This weekend a street preacher also started interfering with the crowd at the pride parade. In both cases, I primarily try to interfere, interrupt, and distract them to prevent them from harassing their targets.

I am consistently surprised by how they can just keep reciting their scripts with a thousand yard stare while crowds are shouting at them to shut up, or chanting go home, or blowing whistles in their ears. They just keep going nonstop. Admittedly a big part of why this bothers me is because of how ineffective our defense efforts often are, but it’s also just really creepy. They don’t react to anything. They aren’t really there to have any kind of conversation. They jut space out and ramble loudly and constantly.