Community Corner

Westboro Baptist Church Threatened to Picket Aaron Swartz's Funeral

The group that came to Skokie in 2010 protest outside the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center said it planned to picket the funeral Highland Park native Aaron Swartz. They didn't show up.

Updated 9:50 p.m. Jan. 15

The church members did not end up coming to the funeral.

Original story

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The Westboro Baptist Church, the group that came to Skokie in 2010 protest outside the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center on Rosh Hashanah, plans to picket Tuesday's funeral of Highland Park native Aaron Swartz, The Chicagoist reports.

Swartz, an Internet activist, co-creator of social news website Reddit and founder of Demand Progress, was found dead in an apparent suicide on Friday in his apartment in Brooklyn. He was 26.

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Patch's full coverage of Aaron Swartz's death

An activist for free online content, Swartz got in trouble with the federal government in 2011 when he was indicted for gaining illegal access to a subscription-based service that distributes literary and scientific journals and then downloading nearly its entire library. 

In a press release published on the Chicagoist, the WBC indicates it has a grudge against cyber criminals. 

"Cyber criminals are the latest face of this nation's and this world's raging at God and His Servants at WBC," the church's press release reads. 

Swartz's funeral is Tuesday at 10 a.m. at Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park.

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