PEORIA (25News Now) – The Peoria branch of the NAACP is calling on park district leaders to apologize for drawing inaccurate parallels between the NAACP and the Trump rally last Sunday.
The rally started at Detweiler Park where people registered before parading in vehicles to the rally site at Exposition Gardens.
NAACP President and Pastor Marvin Hightower and Dr. Gregory Wilson of the YANI Collective Juneteenth shared their letter with the public on Friday. They referred to comments by Park District Executive Director Emily Cahill and Board President Robert Johnson Sr. at a board meeting Wednesday, Oct. 2.
During an hour-long discussion at the meeting, Cahill and Johnson said some people might find NAACP-organized activities as political.
The letter to the park district said “a blatantly false equivalency” was made between the NAACP use of park property and the Trump Train Patriot Rally held Sunday, Sept. 29.
This past June, the park district allowed the NAACP to use the stage at Martin Luther King Jr. Park for the Ernestine Jackson Freedom Day Parade.
“It wasn’t a political event. It was a community event with many other community partners including the Peoria Park District coming together,” the letter said.
Cahill said Trump rally organizers were allowed to rent a shelter at Detweiler for a fee because the park would only be used as a gathering place before the parade.
“No one presented information there. They met and drove somewhere else,” Cahill said.
However, some park board members said they’re catching a lot of grief from constituents for allowing Trump supporters to use Detweiler as a gathering place.
“There are people who are severely hurt by what they perceive as the park district’s participation in this event,” said Park Board Vice President Alex Sierra.
Sierra and Park Board member Timothy Bertschy said the district should return money Trump rally organizers spent to rent the shelter.
25News reached out to Cahill who declined comment and referred to what she said on video from Wednesday’s board meeting.
At the meeting, Cahill apologized for not bringing the matter to the entire board. Cahill said she will present future requests to the board, but member Joyce Harant said some guidelines are needed to be fair to all groups wanting to use park property.
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