Girl Raises Lots of Cash by Smothering Hate with Lemonade

A child is doing more to advance social justice than I have in my entire life.

Jayden is a five-year-old from Kansas City. After her parents told her about the significance of the Equality House – a rainbow-colored structure across the street from the Westoboro Baptist Church compound-o-hate – she decided she had to do something to promote peace and love.

You remember the WBC, right? They are the Topeka based church, famous for their colorful anti-gay protest signs. They’ve made a name for themselves by picketing everybody’s funerals and basically being the worst.

The Equality House is the other end of the spectrum. It’s run by the nonprofit Planting Peace. The group decided to purchase a house across the street from the WBC compound, and it houses volunteers who want to work on the group’s equality and anti-bullying campaigns.

So how does a kid make the world a better place? She opens up a lemonade stand, of course!

Oh man…I can feel my cynical, jaded heart melting. Watch out heart! You’re about to go full thaw. According to the Huffington Post:

So she painted a banner for the event reading, “Pink Lemonade for Peace: $1 Suggested Donation.” She put the stand in the grass and waited. But the waiting didn’t take long. Supporters came in by the droves and $1 turned into hundreds of dollars.

How adorable is that? And awesome. Adorable and awesome. Everything that is good and just in the world is represented by this little girl and lemonade stand.

There is an online fundraising campaign set up through Crowd Rise. As of Monday evening, Jayden has raised over – wait for it – $15,000. Fifteen thousand American dollars. The money will go to Planting Peace, the social justice nonprofit that owns and runs the Equality House.

That’s it. I’m dead. This whole situation is so heartwarming and encouraging that it killed me.

The WBC douche canoes were predictably horrible. As reported at HuffPo:

During the day, Westboro sent representatives outside to try and find a way to stop the event. They apparently attempted to call the local police and stooped to yelling profanities when that didn’t work, like calling a group of soldiers who rode out on their motorcycles to support the event “bastards.”

Remember, Jayden is five years old. She’s a child selling lemonade and fighting injustice. And she’s met with silencing techniques and bullying. Maybe WBC thought their PR couldn’t get any worse, so why not harass a little girl?

If yelling wasn’t enough, they wrote it down, as well. According to the Huffington Post:

On Monday, Westboro members took things to a new low when they posted an anti-gay message on their marquee, reading: “FAGS & ENABLERS ALL BURN IN HELL LEMONADE WON’T COOL ANY TONGUES.”

But haters gonna hate, I guess. Just the death throes of a regressive ideology that won’t go without a fight, but it will go in the end. Jayden should be incredibly proud of herself. It takes courage to stand up to bullies, even with the firmest support. Well done.

 

Photo courtesy of Equality House

149 comments

Sheri D.
Sheri D4 years ago

This little girl has more compassion and common sense than many adults.

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Ann Razumovskaya
Ann Razumovskaya4 years ago

Let haters cry a river full of hate and drown in it!

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Manuela C.
Manuela C4 years ago

That child is teaching a lesson about tolerance!

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Anastasia Z.
Anastasia Z4 years ago

what an amazing story!

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Dennis D.
Past Member 4 years ago

Dennis W. To me they are heroes. Yes even heroes have bad guys among them. At the same time I understand what it takes to put on that uniform and do a job that few would do.

But thanks for the paraniosd conspiracy thoery crap.. Dennis with all due respect and i mean that.

Ther is not an increasingly amount of skinheads or fascists that are joining just to learn how to use weapons.

In truth today the young people that joining often are joining for economic reasons. Are enlisting because they do want to serve their country. Many are accepting that among their ranks are LGBTQ. The militry culture is changing. The young people today that enlist are not as the days of when my siblings enlisted or myself had I not tore knee cap to shreds in an accident.

I have nephews and cousins in the armed forces with two more that have/will enlist soon.

So, yes, there are heroes in uniform that are my family as well.

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Dennis Warren
Dennis Andrew Warren4 years ago

Dennis D., while I agree with the intent of your comment, I have always taken exception to using the word "hero" to describe every service member who chooses to wear the uniform. While I would doubt that any of the service members who bought Jayden's lemonade are nazis, skinheads, or white supremacists (since they share some of the ideology of the wbc asshats), there is an increasingly large proportion of service members who join up to learn weapons and tactics for the race war that they believe is coming and necessary for the white race to regain its dominance over the "lesser" races, and the LGBTQ community is included in that category. I feel the same about using that moniker to describe firefighters; it's their JOB to enter burning buildings to rescue people. Now if a CPA, or a librarian, or a pizza delivery guy runs into a burning building to save a life, THAT'S a hero. I'm not denigrating firefighters, or service members, as I'm sure I couldn't do their jobs, but when we use the term "hero" so loosely, it diminishes the true meaning of the word. I'm sure I'll get some flack from the Care2 community for this, and I'm OK with that; I'm no hero.

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Dennis Warren
Dennis Andrew Warren4 years ago

There's more compassion and love in her little 5 year old heart than in the "hearts" all of the wbc asshats combined, assuming they actually have hearts. I wish I could be there when they're standing at the pearly gates and Peter (or whoever the bible says is the gatekeeper dude) sends them to the down elevator. The only reason I'd ever want to believe in a heaven and hell is so that I can think of "people" like them burning in fire forever.

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Tav T.
tavleen T4 years ago

awww, what a sweet child!

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Kimberly Spiegel
Kimberly Spiegel4 years ago

Very accurate, WBC will go in the end, it's only a matter of time! Hate is ugly, more and more people are waking up to that every day.

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Sheila D.
Sheila D4 years ago

Fantastic story that says it all about the hate-mongers of the religious right. These haters pick and choose what they want from the Bible as it suits them. I wonder how many have actually read the whole Bible?

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