Dear editor,
Around noon on Monday the 14th of September there was a gathering at the west corner of the Ponoka RCMP station, where several speakers gave presentations addressing the issues related to the subject of “Black and Indigenous lives matter.”
On the opposite and west side of the street was a smaller group almost exclusively of men. Walking between the two groups was a man, dressed in army fatigues, wearing an army cap and intentionally using a bullhorn to disrupt the speakers. He minimized and deflected their concerns, I’m guessing, because he he did not agree with those views but also, I believe, because he felt those views had no right to be heard.
That point of view, I believe, is undemocratic, a tactic, that tyrants, who insist that theirs is the only voice worth hearing, typically use. Each of us has a point of view worth hearing. The agenda of the man with the bullhorn reminds me of fascist countries, where only one voice is worth listening to … all other voices by implication are irrelevant.
George Jason,
Ponoka
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