Councilmember Cournoyer strikes back at Woonsocket Pride organizers and speakers
“My comments here are not directed to Mr. Kithes or Miss Nwando Ofakansi and these others,” said Woonsocket City Councilmember James Cournoyer. “It’s directed at the people that they’re talking to. Don’t buy it. Are there problems sometimes? Absolutely. If there’s issues that need to be addressed, bring ’em forward. We’ll deal with it. But don’t buy the rhetoric, please. It’s disgusting. Thank you.”
June 21, 2022, 11:41 am
By Steve Ahlquist
Outraged over criticisms of the Woonsocket City Council and Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, Councilmember James Cournoyer requested time at Monday evening’s meting to address the “public remarks delivered by Alex Kithes, Ken Barber, Marlene Guay and Nwando Ofokansi at a ‘Rebuild Woonsocket‘ PRIDE event on Saturday, June 11, 2022 at Woonsocket’s WWII Veteran’s Memorial Park and other recent PRIDE events.” Uprise RI covered the Pride event, with full video, here: Woonsocket Pride 2022 an occasion for joy and resilience. [Uprise also covered th first Woonsocket Pride celebration here: First ever Woonsocket Pride celebration]
At this most recent Pride event, participants and speakers responded to comments made by the Mayor and City Councilmembers when the council voted to approve a resolution allowing official permission to use the park for the Pride event. I covered the discussion here: Woonsocket elected officials threaten to violate 1st Amendment rights if Pride organizers criticize them
This statement from Councilmember Cournoyer is a continuation of that “conversation.” You can watch the video here:
Here’s a transcript, to which I’ve added links to the videos of the comments Councilmember Cournoyer objected to:
“Look, I’ll try to brief here, but I feel this has to be responded to. As most of you know, on June 6th, we had before us a resolution from Rebuild Woonsocket, submitted by Mr. Alex Kithes for a Pride event over at World War II Veterans Memorial Park. I asked, and I think appropriately so based on history, I asked very simply, ‘Is this another event where Mr. Kithes is going to smear the city of Woonsocket and refer to Woonsocket, its officials, etc., as transphobic and homophobic and worse. Simple question. I asked if he was here, if he could just advise us. And there was nobody here. Then the mayor, appropriately so, I might add, raised the issue of the last event [where] they engaged in a fair amount of profanity and vulgarity for which she, and frankly, some of us, see phone calls from constituents that use the park.
“And from there ensued a discussion about what, if anything, we could do or should do to mitigate that. Perfectly rational, perfectly reasonable. That’s what bodies like this do. And yes, people have a first amendment right to say all kinds of things, no matter how crazy they are. I think everybody in this room would defend that right. But by the same token people have a right to go to our parks and enjoy themselves, have the right of quiet enjoyment and not have to expose their children and themselves to profanity and vulgarity. So that’s what the discussion was about. Nobody uttered anything – I don’t think the word LGBTQIA+, gay, queer, any of that stuff. I don’t think any of those words were even mentioned during the discussion. It was simply a discussion about ‘We’re going to give people a permit to use our park. It would be nice if they didn’t engage in vulgarity and profanity. Again, perfectly reasonable...
“From that, Mr. Kithes began his usual thing from his grandmother’s basement, God rest her soul, tweeting that the City of Woonsocket had one of the ‘most LGBTQ phobic and anti First Amendment discussions I’ve ever heard…’
“Then they had the event and right out the gate, again he repeats it, telling the people there that the city council meeting had one of the most LGBTQ-phobic conversations I’ve ever seen a legislative body have. Again, [we] never mentioned the LBTQIA+ or anything of that nature. There was nobody up here that passed any judgment on the event other than the individual Mr. Kithes and his history of smearing the city with false claims and false assertions...
“So what does he do? [In] the conversation we had we werre concerned about vulgarity and profanity and not having other people that go to the park having to listen to that nonsense. What does he do? With his loud speaker in hand he leads a chant and [says] ‘You get bonus points for profanity.’ He proceeded to encourage the handful of people that attended this to engage in exactly the issue that we were raising concerns about. And I would suggest are perfectly legitimate. Do they have a right to spew their profanity? Absolutely. But it’s about having common decency. And that’s what that discussion was about.
“I say this because people like Mr. Kithes and Mr. Ken Barber, who was the Vice President of Operations for Rhode Island Pride and he’s the founder of the Queer PAC, people like Mr. Barber and Mr. Kithes, they tell people that somehow they’re being oppressed by people in this room and by the City of Woonsocket. And that’s not even – there’s nothing further from the truth, okay? Again, listen to the meeting, not a single person up here or down there, or anywhere in the City of Woonsocket that I know of expressed one ounce of judgment – didn’t even mention the subject, but they’re telling these people.
“So I’m saying this for those people that listened, in that audience, ‘Don’t believe what you hear.’ Mr. Kithes has a long history of being unencumbered by the truth. He likes to tell everybody that their a victim and he’s there to save them. It was the same thing when we had the first Pride flag, when we moved the Pride flag, after they inappropriately took down the POW/MIA flag, and made all kinds of false assertions.
“What I found absolutely ironic is Mr. Barber, who was in attendance on Saturday. He said, ‘Listen to the language they,’ meaning the city council and the city administration, ‘listen to the language they used when they talked about our community.’
“Can you realize how ironic that is? First of all, he comes into our community and participates in these chants smearing the City of Woonsocket saying we’re all transphobic and homophobic and all this other nonsense, but he has the gall to say, ‘Listen to the language they use when they talk about our community.’ The irony is just mind numbing...
“Ms. Marlene Guay. She’s the one who famously said that we zeroed out the book budget, which was an absolute false statement. She said, ‘The city council tries to divide us.’ I don’t know where any this stuff comes from. We had a discussion about a group using the city park and suggesting that they ought not to, or at least try to refrain from, vulgarity and profanity, because there are other people that use the parks. Perfectly fair, perfectly reasonable, nothing to do with transphobia or homophobia or anything else, beause nobody up here feels that way...
“Because you know what? If you identify – if you are LGBTQ or anything else want to say, good for you. You’re no better, you’re no worse than any of us. We’re all the same. We all get up and put our pants and skirts on the same. So don’t buy into the nonsense you hear from these people.
“And then lastly, Miss Nwando Ofakansi, [note: Cournoyer repeatedly mispronounces Ofakansi’s name] she got up and said, ‘We live in a community that we know there are issues with discrimination in all sorts of structural oppression. Here we go again. The City of Woonsocket is oppressing people. We went through this a few years ago when we had a resolution and we amended it such that we said we denounced any all forms of supremacy and oppression. Any and all forms – and we were criticized for. If she stands up and says, ‘We live in a community that we know that there are issues with discrimination and all sorts of structural oppression,’ that’s interesting, because I was told there was only one form of oppression that’s bad. Turns out she agrees with this now...
[You can read the entirety of the Woonsocket City Council’s discussion about “all forms of supremacy” here: The Woonsocket City Council just amended a resolution against white nationalism into a mockery of itself, then passed it]
“This individual is out talking to the youth of this community, filling their heads on a regular basis, much like Mr. Kithes is telling these kids that they’re victims. So before they even get up and start their day in the morning, they have in their head that they’re being oppressed and they’re victims.
“My comments here are not directed to Mr. Kithes or Miss Nwando Ofakansi and these others. It’s directed at the people that they’re talking to. Don’t buy it. Are there problems sometimes? Absolutely. If there’s issues that need to be addressed, bring ’em forward. We’ll deal with it. But don’t buy the rhetoric, please. It’s disgusting. Thank you.“
“No, thank you,” said City Council President Daniel Gendron.
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