The Rally for Civility at New Denmark Park last Friday was what we hoped it would be — a fun, welcoming and peaceful community-building event. Over 125 people listened to music and played games on an idyllic summer evening by Fountain Lake. Donations raised $126 for the Crime Victims Crisis Center.

We want to thank all the people who volunteered their time and talents, provided financial support and gave us encouragement.

Photos of the event are posted on the Rally for Civility Facebook page. You can look at them, read what Ted Nugent said about us and draw your own conclusions.

At the Grandstand later that night, Ted Nugent, who said he was told to keep it PG, continued to belittle people who protested his appearance at the fair. He claimed to have been sent by God to confuse the hippies. He said if he has hurt people’s feelings, they should go to Minneapolis since it “has a safe zone for the feeble among us.” He stated people protest him because they have “(expletive) for brains.” In contrast to that, he said, “God bless the real Minnesotans.”

He also said he was rocking his “old balls off” and asked who was “gonna suck” them. He soon veered back to political smears by telling concert goers to clean house of “dirtbags” like Al Franken.

After the concert, he posted Sam Wilmes’ article about the concert on his Facebook page and insulted Wilmes’ journalism credentials.

Does this fit the mission statement, “It is the aim of the management to have a moral, clean fair which will command the support of the entire community?”

Mike Woitas told a reporter from the New York Daily News last week that he doesn’t know where protesters found this “so-called” mission statement. If he opens a 2016 Freeborn County Fair book, it’s at the top of page 4, across from his name on the list of officers, in all capital letters.

This brings up many questions. Why is the fair board’s entertainment director unfamiliar with the fair’s mission statement? Does bringing in money and record crowds supersede the fair’s gatekeeper responsibility to also represent our community values? How are fair board members selected? There seems to be a lot of deference given to the fair board; what kind of accountability does the fair board have?

Ted Nugent pegged my friends and me as a bunch of unwashed communists. He doesn’t know that I grew up on a farm among as many “real Minnesotans” as he could imagine. He also doesn’t seem well-versed in one of the values my siblings and I were raised with in rural Minnesota — that you should treat people with respect, even if you disagree with them. I think this is still a basic community value in Albert Lea as well, and it’s worth standing up for.

 

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Albert Lea