Education

Grade School Choir Banned From Singing PATRIOTIC SONGS At Utah Freedom Festival

Font Size:

School district officials in a small-town, southern Utah county have canceled a plan to send a fifth-grade choir to sing patriotic songs at a local festival because some local parents oppose the politics of the event and of its organizers.

The one-day gathering now bereft of a fifth-grade choir is the Western Freedom Festival in Cedar City (pop: 28,857), reports The Salt Lake Tribune.

On Friday, school district officials and festival coordinators announced that fifth graders from surrounding Iron County will not croon a scheduled set of patriotic songs collectively called Hope for America. It was a mutual decision.

“We’ve stepped out of our participation,” Iron County school district spokesman Steve Burton told the Tribune. “It’s our policy not to be involved in events that have a political agenda.”

Iron County commissioner David Miller, one of the organizers of the festival, suggested that the school district wants to remain steadfastly apolitical.

“We don’t want to put our school districts or any of our community in a place where they’re uncomfortable with what we’re doing,” Miller told the Salt Lake City newspaper.

At the same time, Miller blamed a “micro-small group” of local parents for the Hope for America program cancellation. They deceptively misrepresented the program, he charged.

“They’re making such a big stink it’s not worth it,” Miller told the Trib. “They can have their way.”

The “disinformation” is “very deflating,” he added.

In the comment section below the Tribune story, a few commenters defend the now-successful bid to cancel the choir performance.

One commenter represents himself as one of the complaining parents.

“As it stands, your piece gives Commissioner Miller and organizers air time to describe many parents as though we are small in number and fringe — we are not,” the commenter, Zinwhit, asserts.

“As one of the parents who brought this to the attention of both the school board and the Trib, contacting a parent for comment to include in this article would have been nice,” Zinwhit also says.

The Western Freedom Festival is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 23 on the campus on Southern Utah University. It will feature a conference with several speakers and a performance by Darryl Worley, a country music singer.

Topics to be discussed at the conference will be federalism and attempts to transfer ownership of public lands from the federal government to the Utah state government — a huge local issue.

“The western freedom festival is intended to celebrate our heritage and culture and bring awareness to the efforts that are negatively impacting those cultures, traditions, and lifestyles,” organizers explain on the festival website. “Event organizers believe western culture and tradition is under assault and that conservative family values, faith, hard work and entrepreneur-ism is being displaced by negativity toward these values.”

Leland Pollock, a county commissioner in adjacent Garfield County, stressed religion in a statement about the conference.

“We are surrounded by an ocean of public land, yet the freedom to use that land is vanishing,” Pollock said, according to the Tribune. “One would never think our religious freedoms would be under attack, yet we all know what has happened regarding Christian values.”

The Facebook page for the Western Freedom Festival warns against anyone criticizing the event on the Facebook page.

“Just an FYI, any attempt to hijack our page, posts, etc. for liberal progressive trolling will result in your immediate and permanent ban from our page,” a page update advises. “While we respect your right to your opinion and that of free speech, exercise your first amendment on your own soapbox not ours.”

Follow Eric on TwitterLike Eric on Facebook. Send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel