Group presents petition requesting guidelines to Mahomet Music Festival Committee
BY DANI TIETZ
dani@mahometnews.com
That’s what a petition handed to the Mahomet Music Festival committee Thursday night signed by 80 Mahomet residents said.
Prior to Thursday’s final meeting before the festival on Aug. 23 and 24, the group reached out to Committee Chairman Dave Parsons and Village Administrator Patrick Brown to talk about their concerns regarding the sale of and display of the confederate flag by a festival vendor and parade entrant.
The petition reads:
As Mahomet continues to expand and grow, we can all agree that we want our community to be a welcoming one. The Music Festival is an important showcase of our town. The festival’s home page describes it as “family-friendly fun.” For the last several years, a vendor at the Mahomet Music Festival has sold items with confederate flags on them. In addition, there were confederate flags in one entry in the parade last year.
After the Civil War, the confederate flag was rarely seen. It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that the flag started being used more widely by Senator Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats to show opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and to scare African Americans. We love living in Mahomet and want everyone to see this town for the special place that it is. However, we know families that have chosen not to move to Mahomet, and individuals who will not eat in our restaurants or enjoy our festivals, out of fear of what they will encounter.
Recently, our state disinvited a rock band that featured confederate flags during their shows from playing at a state fair. A statement about this issue said, “Symbols of hate cannot and will not represent the values of the Land of Lincoln.” We agree.
The confederate flag is a divisive symbol and should have no place at an event designed to bring our community together. We believe in free speech but speech that makes people feel unwelcome, excluded or afraid is harmful.
Just as we have rules and regulations to make everyone safe and ensure a smooth-running festival, we encourage the festival committee to add guidance to vendors and parade participants that would make everyone who attends the festival feel welcome. We urge the committee to request that vendors not display inflammatory or offensive images or language at their booths. This request would be in keeping with the family-friendly atmosphere and event that you work so hard to put on each year.
The group of about 10 that were in attendance Thursday night also handed the committee examples of guidelines from other festivals who had instated regulations or guidelines on items of inflammatory nature.
Parsons started the discussion by saying,, “I want to thank you guys for coming. It’s really important. I got to talk to some of you this afternoon. We want to hear what the people think of the festival, and we want to hear different ideas and different viewpoints and thoughts.
“We are aware of a couple of different issues that have cropped up over the years.
“We kind of halted one last year. The gentleman who was selling the confederate flag said that he would not have it on display, but if someone asked to buy it (he’d) sell it.”
“I think that was a big step for us to get him to do that,” Brown said.
“We are aware of the guy on the tractor. Village President (Sean) Widener personally asked him not to do that. He said ‘well, I’m going to do it.’ ”
Parsons said that his vision for the festival has always been to make it a family-fun event.
“I want it to be fun for adults, fun for kids,” he said.
But, as a public committee under the umbrella of the Village of Mahomet, there are considerations a private organization may not have to adhere to.
“We are working with Village attorney counsel in trying to figure out what we can do legally, what we cannot do legally,” Parsons said.
“There is freedom of speech issues, too.”
Brown said that he had been in discussion with other fairs and festival committees and legal counsel and found that it is possible for committees to put guidelines in vendor agreements on what will be allowed to retail.
“The State fair announced a press release in 2015, banning confederate flag sales,” he said. “They never did it. I talked to legal counsel, they never did it, but they also kind of said you can have policies that they must follow in your vendor agreements.”
Brown said that he looked at a New York state law that said legally the sale of the confederate flag cannot be banned, but that the state “voluntarily got all of their vendors to say they wouldn’t do it.”
Using Parson’s examples, Brown said that is the route the Village and festival committee have taken within the last few years.
Brown also said he’s also seen communities which have banned all flags, except the American flag, state flag, and municipal flag, to combat the sale of the confederate flag in festivals.
“To me that’s possible, but that’s an extreme,” Brown said.
“If you ban all flags, except for the American flag and the State flag, that means the color guard couldn’t have flags.”
As for the 2019 Mahomet Music Festival, vendor agreements have already been settled.
Lara Hansfield suggested that the committee communicates with the vendors that the sale or display of the confederate flag is “strongly discouraged.”
Mary Fortune wondered if all applicants, both vendors, and parade, had to be accepted.
“In government, you have to make it fair across the board,” Brown said.
Brown’s example is that if the committee wanted to get rid of a tractor displaying a confederate flag, they would have to ban all tractors in the parade.
Widener said that the flag on the tractor raises another issue in that it is actually the Mississippi state flag, which includes the confederate flag in the top left corner of its design.
Brown cited examples of other parade entrants which were allowed to be in the parade in other communities.
“If somebody wants to go in the parade and wear t-shirts with the confederate flag on it, there’s zero we can do about it,” Brown said. “If the KKK wants to march, well we know the Skokie case, they want to march, there is zero we can do.
“What we can do or what we can discourage from the vendor side, I’m feeling good that that is our best angle.”
Dee Chapman wanted to know if there was a way that vendors could be more strategically placed so that the first thing people see when they come into the festival is not the confederate flag.
“That’s a lot harder for us because we have to put certain people in certain places,” Parsons said. “We put certain people in certain places because of the amount they pay. We have $100,000 worth of expenses for a 36-hour show. We have to give priority to those who want to pay more.
“That’s a lot more difficult.”
Fortune also suggested that the festival committee change the vendor atmosphere to negate that a confederate flag might be sold or on display.
“We read in the paper this week how this festival has changed,” Fortune said. “I remember when it was nothing more than some carnival rides and junk food.
“And it’s expanded over the years, it’s gotten a lot of high-interest music groups to come in, one way to avoid these types of vendors is to change the type of vendors that you have.
“Bring in local artisans. We all know there are hundreds of local artisans throughout the state of Illinois.”
Parsons and Lyn Ferdinand, who is in charge of collecting and organizing vendors, said that a craft section of vendors has been tried to no avail.
“I’ll be honest, we have tried it three or four times and failed miserably,” Parsons said.
According to Ferdinand, Elizabeth VanHoutan McDermith of Yellow & Co. tried to get 20 artisan vendors this year but was only able to secure six.
Parsons said if the group wanted to help with getting those types of vendors to the 2020 Mahomet Music Festival, the help would be welcome.
Tim Livingston said that he believes the Village of Mahomet has an opportunity to make a statement about the type of community it wants to be.
“I think it’s great that you’re talking to vendors one-on-one, I think that’s really important,” he said.
“But I think it’s a much bigger opportunity to step forward.
“The Fisher Fair where confederate flags are prominently sold, to me, that says a lot about the community. It says a lot about the vendor, but it also says a lot about the community that’s going to tolerate that; to stand by while that takes place. It sends a message about the community. That’s not what we want.”
The group suggested that they would be willing to help the committee with the topic in the future as both groups parted ways with the understanding that the conversation would continue in September as discussions about future festivals commence.
Both Parsons and Brown encouraged the group to continue to send them information as they learn more.
Diana Onken, who read and presented the petition, said “it was really promising that the leadership of the festival committee and the staff of Mahomet have already been thinking about this and doing research. That really shows that they agree that this should be a welcoming community.”
Her hope is that moving forward the committee and Village will go as far as they can within the confines of legal counsel. She also hopes that stronger language will be considered to curb vendors from selling or displaying inflammatory or offensive language and images.
“I think that could go a long way,” Onken said.
Moving forward, the group will stay in touch with the festival committee.
“Follow-up is the chariot to genius,” Onken said.
“I think following up, seeing where things are at, both before the festival and then after the festival is a really important opportunity for us to circle back.
“They will be doing debriefing as well to see what they can do next year. That’s a great opportunity to meet with them again.
“They will have a chance to look at the policies we shared with them tonight, and talk to their own legal counsel, and I think that would be a great opportunity for us to work in partnership with them.”
The group is a part of the Champaign County Democrats and the Mahomet Democrats and will have its own booth at the Mahomet Music Festival.
As in years past, the booth will have fun activities for kids, including face painting. They will also be registering voters and have candidate information.
“We will still be here doing our thing,” Onken said.
