The Warren Hills Human Rights Club and Gay Straight Alliance came together to discuss and present the Pyramid of Hate in a library showcase in October.

The song “Glory” by John Legend played while the classes were entering to participate in the showcase.  The lyrics, “One day when the glory comes, it will be ours, it will be ours,” resonated the song’s theme about how one day people will not be hated for their differences, but that everyone will be treated equally despite their differences.

“Celebrate the freedom to be you,” Bethany Torsiello of GSA told the crowd.

Human Rights and GSA members introduced themselves and gave information about their clubs. Both groups want to spread awareness to help the world in different ways with their missions, but they came together to recognize and introduce the Pyramid of Hate to the showcase attendees.

“This is the Pyramid of Hate,” Torsiello said. “It starts at the bottom with prejudiced attitudes, like accepting stereotypes or making belittling jokes, and then it moves up to acts of prejudice, like name calling or ridicule, then to discrimination in society, to violence against either property or people, and then at the top of the pyramid is genocide, which is like the elimination of a species.”

Next, a video about last year’s shooting at a gay club in Orlando was shown.  Overall, 49 people were killed and many people were injured.  This incident is not the only one against the LGBTQ community, and many people of that community have reported feeling unsafe in their surroundings.

“This shooter definitely had intentions of discrimination against LGBT people, and we know his intention was discrimination,” Torsiello said.

Discrimination plays an important role throughout the entire pyramid.

“As one moves up the pyramid, the behaviors have more life-threatening consequences,” said GSA member Shannon Sloan in relation to the Orlando shooting.

The next video was a segment from The Queen Latifah Show, featuring three female guests from the non-profit organization “Get Lit.”  Latifah said that the group is trying to change the world. At the end of the video, representatives of the show noted, “Every state in America, the greatest lessons are the ones you don’t remember learning.”

Another video – this one from punk rock band Rise Against – was dedicated to the nonprofit “It Gets Better” project.  After that, a short clip from the movie The Freedom Writers addressed how a group of people, or a gang with pure hatred toward another gang because of their differences, could turn genocidal.

Kyle Smith of Human Rights Club said, “The term genocide came about in 1944. It was initially used to describe a systematic campaign for the extermination of people.”

The next two videos that were played were “It All Starts with One” and “What’s Going On?” “It All Starts with One” is a student-made film that was created at Warren Hills and has students involved within it.  The “What’s Going On?” video lists modern statistics about common life and how people’s differences affect others in different ways.