The County Fair was a wonderful family event, as always, and those of us staffing the Democratic Committee’s booth met many friendly fairgoers who stopped by our booth to talk with us. Unfortunately, we had three incidents of abusive, very loud verbal attacks by supporters of the current Republican Presidential Candidate, such that those at our booth were afraid for their physical safety. On one of the occasions there were two very young children coloring pictures at the booth who were, understandably, quite frightened.
I am very grateful for the assistance from sheriff deputies during each of these incidents, and for Sheriff DuMond, who stopped by on several occasions in the days after the first incident to assure our volunteers to not hesitate to contact his team if we had any concerns. We did, and the deputies responded quickly and appropriately.
I was particularly heartened by the assistance I received during one of those attacks from volunteers staffing the Republican Committee’s booth. One did his best to try and calm the abusive person, unfortunately without success, and came under attack himself. But as one of the Republican volunteers said to me: “Regardless of our differences, we need to support each other because we are neighbors. And that’s what’s most important.” I agree.
Kim Van Atta
Vice Chair,
Delaware County
Democratic Committee
