“For most of our events we all share information, but [this time] we closed ranks,” said John Wilborn. “Only three people were involved in this process, where normally we would have 20 people involved.” Photo credit: Jamie Carney
ing up pigs with a fork. There was signage about raping children. A couple of times someone would come across the street and the traf- was coming in was coming to the event and not to cause trouble. You had the intertwining of those individuals arriving and we had [about 2,000] people departing from the arena from the World War Fit [event we had scheduled earlier that day]. Police estimated there were about 1,000 protesters in the north
months later held the cartoon contest. - School District property. It was explained that protesters could not be arrested because it was not a school district event. I made note of that because it becomes critical as we get further
down the road.
Geller Contracts With The Venue called and, basically, harassed us with questions like, “How could you all use the school district facility to rent that out?” By law we can’t
refuse anybody by race, creed, color, or religious beliefs. We rent to everyone as long as they have valid paperwork and go through the val- id renting process. We’ve had every denomination come through our facility with no problems and have had an open-door policy all along. Our mandate is to rent to everyone because we are a school district facility open to all.
After she contacted us she started posting online that she was seek-
ing to rent our building, that this event was going to be very dangerous and she would need help protecting her group when they came to the facility, supposedly from the Muslims, who weren’t even barking back. Internally, myself and Kevin Welch, our event services manager, took that as she was trying to set it up so these long guns and other individ- uals can come here and think that they’re going to serve as security at the building. I also decided that I was closing ranks here at the build- ing. For most of our events we all share information and things such as that, but at this point we closed ranks. Only three people were involved in this process where normally we
would have 20 people involved. I didn’t need any loose lips. People might be saying something casually that they might not think would was Welch, and a lieutenant with the police department. We sat down
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