Organizers of the Western Freedom Festival held in Cedar City last Friday, Oct. 23, called the event a success in spite of the ongoing controversy surrounding the festival.
“Our numbers exceeded what we expected,” said Beaver County commissioner Mark Whitney. “Right off the bat, we had someone put so many false implications out into the public, into the newspapers and everybody else that it literally tried to kill us and it put us at odds with the Western Livestock Festival. When you consider what we had to start from and I mean it was an uphill battle from the beginning because of the negative implications of this being a political event and it’s not a political event. It’s an educational event. It’s a celebration event.”
Approximately 150 people attended the Legacy of Freedom Conference portion of the festival at the Cedar City Heritage Center held Friday morning. Iron County Commissioner Dave Miller called it an impressive number considering all the controversy and the fact it was only the first year.
“We don’t know how to put on an event or a festival like this,” Miller said. “This thing was a huge project, so I think for our first year and considering everything we’ve had against us, it was definitely a success.”
Most of those who attended the conference said they enjoyed it and learned a lot from the line-up of speakers that included Miller and local conservative talk show host Bryan Hyde.
“There was a lot of information about the constitution and public lands especially for those who don’t know what the issues are and what’s going on and what the government is doing,” said Marilyn Wood, a local rancher. “It was a very educational conference and event, and the information is so important. We need to get this information out there to the public and in our schools for our children to learn.”
Others in attendance whose views differed from the central theme of the conference didn’t feel the same about the information that was presented.
“Attending the Western Freedom Festival today has been very eye opening,” said Iron County resident Jill Stevens. “A radical group of presenters and supporters promoted a highly narrow interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, claiming that the federal government has no legitimate ownership of state lands. Furthermore, they claimed to have ‘natural rights’ bestowed upon them from the Creator that supersede human laws including the Constitution. I left the conference my stomach in knots and shaken, having finally witnessed pure evil in action, in-person for the first time in my life.”
At the beginning of Miller’s conference presentation, he showed a slide on the proper role of government, explaining that despite all the controversy and negative attention surrounding the festival, the goal of the event was not to have a “bash session” about the federal government.
“The objective of coming together is not to create animosity with a federal partner, but to try to figure out how we work with a federal partner in a way that protects our inalienable rights and protects our interests at home,” he said.
Others presenters were a little quicker to condemn the actions of the federal government.
Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory described the federal government as a bloated—and growing—front wheel of a bicycle.
“Until we solve the system problem, it doesn’t matter how hard you pedal on the bike,” Ivory said. “In fact, the harder you pedal, the worse it could be.”
Subjects covered at the conference included federal land management and federalism. Ivory urged those in attendance to put people into office who share his beliefs that the federal government has overstepped its authority by managing what he says is “state-owned land.”
“If those who are appointed to be our representatives don’t understand the framework of our system, they are just playing government,” Ivory said. “Our hope is that when we have people looking for jobs next year that you will hire people that know what governing is to protect liberty.”
Whitney said he and his fellow county commissioners plan to make the festival an annual event.
“Next year is going to be bigger and better,” he said.
The Western Freedom Festival also included a Friday night concert featuring country and western star Darryl Worley at Southern Utah University’s Centrum Arena. The concert brought in higher attendance numbers than the conference.
No one kept track of tickets at the door, so there were no hard numbers accounted for on how many people actually attended the concert; however, Mindy Benson, SUU’s vice president over alumni and community relations, said she believes there were between 2,000 and 2,500.
“From what I could see and having done a lot of years of concerts, I estimated about that many, but since no one was really taking tickets, we don’t have any real numbers,” she said.
While the concert didn’t fill up the Centrum, Benson said it had a relatively good showing, especially considering it was a first for event organizers.
“A lot of people are very surprised when they do a concert,” she said. “They assume that people will just show up because of the artist, and that is not the case. You have to market and market some more.”
Benson added that ticket sales couldn’t be used as an accurate gauge of attendance either since there were only about 230 tickets sold at the point when an anonymous donor purchased approximately 3,000 in bulk that were handed out for free to various groups and individuals. This wasn’t the only anonymous act carried out on behalf of the Western Freedom Festival. At the Oct. 16 Iron County Commission meeting, commissioners announced they had received an anonymous donation of $20,000.
Benson said the County was not charged a general fee for the use of the Centrum but instead were paying for the overhead and expenses of using the Arena, including security, lights, and labor. Benson said this type of fee structure has been the standard for some time.
“We are more concerned about covering the hard costs and making sure we can cover those than we are about anything else,” she said. “So the County didn’t get a special price. They paid what anyone else would have paid for the same thing.”
Benson said as of Thursday, Oct. 30, that she didn’t know for sure what the bill would total as she was still waiting for more information to come in.
The festival came under scrutiny after the Iron County commissioners proposed to use an additional $20,000 out of the County coffers to help pay for the festival. Several residents appeared in front of the Iron County Commission on Oct. 16 to speak out against the use of the money, saying they believed the money could be used for “better things.” They also argued against the money being put toward an event they said was “clearly political.” However, the commissioners unanimously voted to approve the $20,000 expenditure that came from the Transient Room Tax.
After the meeting, the same residents who had raised concerns spoke to The Independent and maintained the donation was “illegal,” because the County could not give taxpayer’s money to “political events.”
Pointing to Utah Code 20A-11-1202, 1203 and 1206, state auditor John Dougall said it’s legal to spend taxpayer’s money on a political event so long as it is not an issue listed on the November ballot or a candidate’s personal political campaign. However, Dougall said he did not have any details about the event and did not want to provide a surefire answer at this point regarding whether it was legal for the commissioners to donate money.
Iron County was one of eight counties to sponsor the event, with Washington County committing to a $10,000 donation. At the time of publication, it is unknown if there were any donations by the other counties.
The Independent submitted an expedited records request to Miller on Monday, Oct. 26, under Utah’s Government Records Access Management Act for a copy of all financial details and personal correspondence including emails concerning the Western Freedom Festival. Under the law, the Commission is required to fulfill an expedited request within five days. As of Friday, Oct. 30, no response had been sent as to the status of the request.
Besides the use of $20,000 from the County coffers, there were also questions surrounding the association of the festival with Ivory, who was recently cleared by the Utah Attorney General’s Office on allegations of fraud in connection with his work to raise money to fight the federal government on the issue of public lands ownership.
Ivory sponsored H.B. 148 Transfer of Public Lands Act, passed by the Utah Legislature in 2012 and signed into law by Gov. Gary Herbert. The law demanded the federal government turn over public lands now under federal jurisdiction to the state by Dec. 31, 2014. Several states have since followed suit.
The Campaign for Accountability out of Washington, D.C., had pursued fraud investigations of Ivory in Utah, Arizona and Montana last June, alleging the representative had used his position as a state lawmaker to solicit funds on behalf of the American Lands Council whose mission is aligned with H.B. 148 in transferring the public lands to the states. Ivory is president of American Lands Council.
Utah is the second of three states to refuse to take up a case against Ivory. Montana was first, stating it had found no basis for an investigation. The status of the issue is still unknown in Arizona.
While the Darryl Worley concert may have been well attended, the concert and Western Freedom Festival also came under heat just days before the actual event when pictures of Worley posing nude for the July 2007 Playgirl magazine surfaced on Twitter and Facebook under the hashtag #NotOurValues.
The Spectrum and Daily News reported on Oct. 23 that flyers had circulated in Cedar City depicting Worley’s “risqué photos” with the words “do you have tickets to the Darryl Worley concert tonight; might want to think twice about taking your kids.”
Also printed on the flyer was the statement, “The Iron County Commissioners must really like this guy.”
According to several news articles, Worley posed for the magazine prior to the birth of his first child, Savannah Gail, born March 2008.
Worley’s time in front of the camera—along with the use of tax dollars to support the Western Freedom Festival—motivated several Southern Utah University and Iron County Democrats to get together Friday night outside of the Centrum Arena to protest the event.
“We don’t support the use of taxpayer dollars to fund this politically charged event,” said Kenneth Kirker, executive council member of the SUU Young Democrats. “And another issue we have is this is supposed to be promoting family values and faith. That’s what they say right on their website, but the main entertainment for the festival that they used our tax dollars for is a former Playgirl model. We oppose that.”
Demonstrator Brittanie Parry, vice chair for the Iron County Democrats, said they had been harassed and called names by several elected leaders.
Parry provided two videos to The Independent which she says show Utah state Rep. Mike Noel berating the demonstrators, going so far as calling them “clowns” while pointing out they had misinformation on one of their signs. Parry stated another video showed Piute County Commissioner Darin Bushman arguing with activist and demonstrator Chris Zinda.
“They get the community out here using propaganda and community family ties,” Parry said. “But my family was one of the first families that settled in Parowan with the original Mormon pioneers, and I don’t think we should be taking the federal lands back. I don’t agree with them, and I don’t agree that $20,000 should be spent promoting that. What if we asked for $20,000 to promote clean energy and getting rid of drilling?”
In an interview with The Independent, Noel said he tried to introduce himself to Zinda and the others, but that it didn’t work out the way he would have liked.
“I walked up and shook his hand and introduced myself,” Noel said. “I started talking to him and telling him that I didn’t agree with him but that I respected his right to exercise his First Amendment, and he just started yelling at me. He wasn’t having it.”
Noel said he didn’t mean to call anyone “clowns,” especially the students but that emotions are high right now regarding the public lands issue.
“In the 13 years I’ve been doing this, things have never been as divisive as they are right now,” he said. “Emotions are so high you have to understand. With the San Juan County commissioner being arrested on charges and the different environmental groups trying to take grazing rights away, I’ve never seen things this tense and emotions this high. It’s very volatile, and the issues have created a lot of divisiveness. I’ve never seen it this bad.”
Bushman said the two-minute video Parry had did not show the whole situation leading up to the argument with Zinda and that initially he and the others had tried to be nice to the demonstrators.
“When we first walked up, we shook their hand and talked to them. [Garfield County Sheriff] Danny Perkins even went up and offered each one of them tickets and told them to come on in and enjoy themselves,” he said.
Bushman also said that while some may see the argument between Zinda and him as bullying, he doesn’t agree, maintaining Zinda asked for it after weeks of “criticizing and slandering him online.”
“I don’t think there was any bullying going on,” Bushman said. “No one was being bullied. And here’s the thing, when you criticize and slander other people, you open yourself up to criticism. People have the same right to speak up as he does.”
While Zinda called the public officials’ behavior “unacceptable,” he complimented Iron and Washington County Commissioners who he said did not participate in “harassing the demonstrators.” Zinda said Miller even went out of his way during the conference to introduce himself.
“He came up and shook my hand, introduced himself and told me we needed to sit down one of these days and talk,” Zinda said. “He was very professional and so were the other Iron County Commissioners and the Washington County Commissioners. None of them participated in the bullying. They weren’t even there with them.”
While some of the county commissioners blamed Zinda for being behind the demonstration, the SUU students took full responsibility for organizing the protest.
“No one told us to do this or organized it for us. We, the SUU Young Democrats, organized this protest,” Kirker said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Mark Whitney as the Beaver County Sheriff and had a quote from Mike Noel referring to the arrest of the Piute County commissioner. Noel’s original quote actually referred to arrest of a San Juan commissioner.
Video provided by Brittanie Parry outside Western Freedom Festival Darryl Worley concert:
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