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Face the Truth This Wednesday, June 16

Face the Truth Display in Evanston, Illinois
Face the Truth Display in Evanston, Illinois

This Wednesday, the League will be conducting the third of our three 2010 Spring Face the Truth Tour days in Evanston and Lincolnwood, two of Chicago’s near north suburbs.

Both of these sites are perennial favorites of the Tour staff, particularly the Evanston site at Davis Street and Ridge Avenue.

The lay of the land at this particular site is such that the boulevard along Ridge Avenue (where Tour participants stand with their signs) is actually about 5 feet above street level, which results in a particularly impressive and imposing Face the Truth display.

This will be the 7th consecutive year we’ve visited Evanston on a Face the Truth Tour, and inevitably, something memorable happens every time we do.

At this site in 2004, a woman came out with a bedsheet and held it in front of the “Choice” sign held by itinerant pro-life activist Bob Roethlisberger, who responded by hoisting it above his head and resting is on his shoulders, thus rendering feckless her attempt to prevent the sign from being seen. He then kept her engaged in conversation for the duration of the Tour site (in part to keep her there so she wouldn’t move on to try to obstruct anyone else’s sign, which she didn’t).

On another occasion, an irate woman parked her car and came to us, asking, “Do you know where you are? This is Evanston!” The disgust in her voice bespoke a belief that we and our signs were not welcome within the city’s rarefied confines. All we could say in response was that we were well aware of where we were.

Another time, a passerby expressed her displeasure with our display of pictures of babies killed by abortion by asking, “Why don’t you show pictures of children who don’t have adequate housing?”

I’m not sure we’ve ever been asked a more ironic question during a Face the Truth demonstration, considering the rather obvious fact that aborted children don’t have adequate housing.

Yet despite all the negative reactions we’ve received in Evanston over the years, it was also the site of a dramatic “save” in 2007, when a woman who had an abortion scheduled that same day approached one of our volunteers and said, with tears in her eyes, that seeing our signs had made her decide that she couldn’t go through with it.

Join Us!

The details for Wednesday’s Truth Day are listed here.

And also make plans to join us for our 8-day summer Tour next month, from July 9-17. The summer Tour itinerary is listed here.

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