Monika Schaefer Excluded from Yellowhead Regional Arts Festival Society

Ever since bringing out her powerful video, Sorry, Mom, I Was Wrong About the Holocaust (in English and German), Jasper Alberta  violin teacher and musician Monika Schaefer has been the victim of a brutal campaign of shunning. She was banned from the local Legion, a frequent venue for musicians in a small town. She was refused a busking permit last year because her ideas were “not inclusive”. All of this virtue signalling is punishment for her dissident views.

Monika frequently volunteered her musical skills free of charge for benefits,. She is a friendly woman deeply involved in environmental and social causes.

Now, she has been told by the Yellowhead regional Arts festival Society not to attend. the pompous prigs proclaim that they “promote a safe learning environment” and that her presence “at our event would not be the correct fit.”

The insolence of this shunning is shocking. Monika would be paying for her own gas and donating her time and talent free of charge as she has many times for the same festival. The suggestion that the gentle Monika playing her violin would endanger someone’s safety is grotesque! Or do they really mean that her ideas challenge the mental straitjacket that constricts the minds of some in the community?

Paul Fromm

Director

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION

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8-September-2017

Dear Monika,

The Yellowhead Regional Arts Festival Society is a non for profit organization that promotes a safe learning environment for members within the communities of the Yellowhead Region.

After careful consideration the board thinks that your presence at our event would not be the correct fit for our organization at this time. [highlight emphases mine]

We wish you all the best with your future musical endeavours.

Yours truly,

The Yellowhead Regional Arts Festival Society Board

MONIKA REPLIED:

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Please explain to me exactly how my presence would not be the correct fit for your organization. Are you implying that my presence with my violin on the stage in Hinton would somehow be dangerous to the audience members? Are you suggesting that I might lose control of my violin bow and poke someone in the eye?

I wonder if your fear stems from any of the numerous fundraisers in the past at which I have donated my time and music (and gas) for the benefit of the Yellowhead Rotary Arts Festival (as it used to be called). What safety concerns were there when so many of my violin students entered the festival in past years, thereby helping to make the festival viable? 

Why are you hiding behind the anonymity of “YRAF Society Board”? Who is pressuring you to make such a decision? Who among your board is doing this? What are your names please? And did you tell my fellow musicians with whom I was to perform that they, by association, are also not the “correct fit”?

You have the audacity to then wish me all the best in my future musical endeavours, after seeking to destroy my current musical endeavours.

Your letter smacks of Orwellian Double-Speak, “…promotes a safe learning environment…”. The level of cowardice in shrouding your identity is astounding.

The people on my extensive bcc list will be very interested in your explanation of why I should not be allowed to volunteer my time and modest talent at your fundraiser show on September 29th, 2017, for which I was willing to spend my money to get there, all for your Society’s benefit.

I await your early response.

Monika Schaefer

Jasper, in the Yellowhead Region