At Monday’s Council meeting, Huntsville Mayor Nancy Alcock spoke to queries about her silence during protests last week related to the question of gender education in schools.
A group calling itself the 1 Million March 4 Children says their aim is to protect children from premature sexualization and potentially harmful indoctrination and a group conducting a counter-protest in support of including the 2SLGBTQ+ community in gender education in schools, met outside of high schools throughout Muskoka, including Huntsville High School last Wednesday.
Alcock said she received many emails from “people whom I admire and actually respect and who expressed their concern about my silence last week. Given I’m the mayor of our community, and many of them assumed my silence meant tacit approval of the march, I wanted to say that my silence is not even close to the truth, it’s nothing further from the truth,” she said.
“I am and always have been committed to promoting an inclusive Huntsville. This includes my unwavering support for the 2SLGBTQ+ community which is why I was extremely supportive of the initiatives taken by Councillors Renwick and Morrison regarding what why now call the community square project… that project is all about inclusivity,” said Alcock.
“But I also believe in people’s right to demonstrate peacefully. I always have. I’ve come from a family where that was part of who we were and we all participated in demonstrations. I also support freedom of speech, which is not inclusive of hate,” she said, adding that Councillors Morrison and Renwick, who participated in the counter-protests on behalf of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, have her unwavering support.
“As I was told by a number of people, there are those in our community who feel they shouldn’t have been part of it, that that’s not for them to speak up and I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that all of us have the right to attend events where people are expressing opinions that support what we state we believe in and especially if it involves human rights, and that’s what it did last week. I feel it’s really important to state that. My silence had absolutely nothing to do with support for that particular march but I do believe people have a right to demonstrate and I think that we all deserve to feel safe in our community.”
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Quiet? The Mayor doesn’t even answer citizens ‘ emails. Why should she be any different now?
Well said Mayor Alcock. You have always shown integrity and it is appreciated that you don’t change who you are just because of pressure nor politics
Thanks so much for Mayor Alcock’s unambiguous support of inclusivity in Huntsville. She make me proud to be a citizen in our beautiful town.