Notre Dame Reagan Protest Organizer: Don't Ruin Anyone's Day

So to say that feeling was running high would be like noting that some ND fans enjoy the occasional beer with their football. And like the opposition to pro-choice President Obama, who will deliver this year's commencement address at my alma mater on Sunday, the outcry against Reagan created a backlash, too, on-campus and off. O'Brien was pelted with an egg while quoting the Bible and MLK at a rally on the school's South Quad, and his staunchly Republican father refused to speak to him for several years.

Yet in contrast to the three-ringed response to Notre Dame's invitation to Obama, the protest against Reagan was muted. This year, a plane pulling a giant photo of an aborted fetus has been circling the campus for weeks, and activists carrying dolls covered in fake blood have gotten themselves arrested. (Excuse me, but is this South Bend or a Fellini movie?) Whereas O'Brien and his compadres registered the full extent of their outrage by wearing white arm bands to graduation.

Because they wanted "to respect the event,'' and didn't want to ruin the day for anyone, the '81 protesters turned down the support of outside groups. "We probably were not hugely visible,'' O'Brien told me in a recent interview at the Philadelphia homeless program where he has worked for the last 19 years. Yet the experience irrevocably changed him, he says, and prepared him for his work as a community organizer.

I sat down with O'Brien in the "Back Home Café'' – a sunny coffee shop run by formerly homeless people at Project H.O.M.E. in downtown Philly. (Their motto: None of Us Are Home Until All of Us Are Home.) In the back is a used clothing store, "Our Daily Threads,'' and upstairs are 48 small apartments occupied by formerly homeless folks battling mental illness. What O'Brien tells me first is that of course the events at Notre Dame have been much on his mind lately; in fact, he's been trying to put himself in the shoes of those protesting Obama.

Which isn't all that hard, because he still so vividly recalls the spring day in his senior year – the day before spring break, actually – when the school announced that Reagan had been invited to deliver the commencement address. Before heading home for a week, he and his fellow student activists for social justice "were all calling each other saying, "This is awful!' ''

"To us, this just violated the mission of Notre Dame as we had heard it. At freshman orientation they'd talked about justice and compassion and I was thrilled by that,'' he says, shaking his head at his younger self. "But I look back and realize I was very naïve about the social culture of N.D.''

By the time they all returned from spring break, some of his buddies had decided not to stick their necks out after all: "People said, "My folks will be there and I can't get involved.' '' Still, several dozen of them hung in there and formed a group called Students Concerned about Commencement. "We said we're not calling this a protest, and we acknowledge the right of the university to invite anyone to speak, but this is the university's last word for us, and it has to be consonant with Catholic social teaching.'' With Reagan cutting social service funding and the Catholic bishops having condemned U.S. aid to El Salvador, Reagan in their view fell short on human rights and economic justice. "So we said he's not an appropriate voice for this role.''

The group drafted a six-page document explaining its position, and O'Brien effectively became the leader and spokesman after a photographer for the school paper snapped a picture at a planning meeting that showed his phone number on the blackboard behind him. Naturally, those who disagreed rang the number around the clock. But the pushback took O'Brien by surprise: A young woman passing out their position paper "was practically beaten in Alumni'' Hall, one of the student dorms, "and people would shove me in North Dining Hall.''

In an attempt to explain their opposition, "We held a rally on South Quad, and the guys from Alumni and Dillon [Halls], God bless 'em, put signs out that said, "Don't give the Gip No Lip'' (referring to Reagan's portrayal of George "the Gipper'' Gipp in the movie "Knute Rockne, All-American'') "and "Reagan is No Pagan,' and "Go to Berkeley.' Rush Limbaugh would have been proud. We got up and read from the Bible and MLK and the Pope, and all the time people were screaming and throwing things at us – I got hit by an egg. But then, thankfully, the dining hall opened and they all went away. We had no idea it was going to be that ugly, and the worst part of it was that there was no dialogue at all.'' In O'Brien's hometown of Rockville, Illinois, the local paper ran a front-page story on him, under the headline, "Rockford Man Protests Reagan.'

As a result, he said, "I ended up leaving N.D. on a fairly bitter note, and it had a personal cost for me because my father, who was an arch-conservative, didn't speak to me'' for years after that. Which was painful for one thing because O'Brien realized that for both him and his father, who was a veteran of World War II, "our political involvement came from our faith.'' His father never did visit him after that, "but at one point he said, "Are you going to be a priest?' and I appreciated that he was at least trying'' to figure out where his son was coming from. Before his father died, they reconciled.

Though he still receives fund-raising letters from his alma mater – "N.D.'s incredibly good at tracking you down'' -- he has not retained ties to the school beyond donating to its social-justice oriented Center for Social Concerns, and he has left the Catholic Church, too. He and his family attend a mostly African-American, inner-city Methodist church, "where Pastor Donna gives the sermon and my 9-year-old, Luke, can raise his hand.'' Though "my leanings are probably pro-life,'' he has a hard time relating to the activists by that name who are marching around his alma mater this weekend.

Yet on the positive side, he says, "Looking back, I'm really proud'' of how he and his friends comported themselves 28 years ago this weekend, and he went into his line of work fully aware of all he was up against. He still attends Catholic retreats occasionally, feeling that spiritually, "They've still got the goods.''

Improbably, he still hopes that some good can come of the current uproar. Though he himself supports Obama, he says he can relate to how those upset about the president's visit feel: "I certainly understand why they need to pose their questions and raise their issues.'' And even now, he's hopeful that it's not to late for the dialogue that he didn't get all those years ago: "One question this could open up is, "What does it mean to be pro-life?' As a society we're so divided on that issue, and if that doesn't happen, Notre Dame will have missed another opportunity.''