By Sheldon Spackman

Women’s March participant angered by sexist comment

Mar 12, 2019 | 11:04 PM

A participant in last Saturday’s Women’s March in Red Deer was left feeling angry and disappointed something that happened soon after the event had wrapped up.

Jordan Galloway says his fiancée Amber Maetche was one of roughly 100 people taking part in the march which passed by a group of yellow vest protesters at Gaetz Avenue and Ross Street near City Hall.

After the march crossed the street, Galloway says one of the yellow vest protesters is said to have shouted a couple of times “rope ‘em and grope ‘em.”

“My fiancée told me that when I picked her up and we had to drive by that way, so we decided to drive up and hold our Equality for All sign out the window,” Galloway recounted. “Then a bunch of people with the vests who were protesting came up to talk to us and we told them why we were stopping.”

Galloway says they explained to the group that one of them was being disrespectful.

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“They all kind of had some different answers,” recalls Galloway. “One guy is like, ‘That’s not what he said,’ someone else said ‘That wasn’t me who said that,’ but nobody was really on the same page. It seemed like generally, people agreed that something had been said but no one was going to admit what got said or by who.”

Galloway says he works with young students and deals a lot with bullies. He feels not calling the man out for what he said would have been hypocritical on his part.

“We were kind of upset that no one came forward but there was sort of a guy to the side chuckling, so we kind of thought it was him,” adds Galloway. “We just want to tell this guy that’s not okay. You can’t talk to anybody like that, let alone a whole group of people, especially when there’s families walking too, there are kids who are hearing this.”

Galloway says their intentions in raising awareness about the incident aren’t political in nature, but to stand up for what’s right.

“It seems some people are focused on the yellow vest part of it but whatever, that just happened to catch people’s attention about it,” says Galloway. “The point is, there’s an old man who is being a sexist bully who is making violent jokes towards women and that’s just not OK. Honestly, saying ‘rope ‘em and grope ‘em’, I think borderlines verbal assault.

“If one other person stands up to a bully, then this is all worth it.”

Another man in a yellow vest, who asked to remain anonymous, told rdnewsNOW why he shouted the phrase “global warming” back at participants of the march.

“I’m just mocking them,” he stated. “Equality is pretty generic, but it’s a free country.”