Nearly a 1,000 People Attended the Black Lives Matter Protest in Woodstock

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Tuesday, 9 June 2020 13:04

The Black Lives Matter protest in Woodstock on Sunday was well organized and had a tremendous turn out of people showing their support. We spoke with one of the organizers Jessica Hofstetter. (Article also includes amazing drone footage of the event by Tom Blackmore)

WOODSTOCK - The Black Lives Matter protest in Woodstock on Sunday was well organized and had a tremendous turn out of people showing their support.

We have had BLM protests all across Oxford County, with a couple of protesters in Ingersoll on Monday and a small protest in Tillsonburg on Saturday. The protest in Woodstock had the biggest crowd and featured several speakers. It was organized by Jessica Hofstetter and Hannah Hodder who were two of the speakers at the event as well. We spoke with Hannah leading up to the protest on Friday.

Hofstetter explains why she decided to host a protest in Woodstock.

"Growing up being bullied a lot, lot's of people in Woodstock don't think that racism happens here, they think it is just an issue in the United States or bigger cities and that is not the case at all. So having personally went through it, I wanted to cause awareness and show that it does happen in a small town like Woodstock."

Hofstetter says the support at the rally was tremendous.

"Doing this event in a 5 day span, I was kind of overwhelmed thinking, how am I going to pull this off. I didn't honestly think there would be a lot of people, but the turnout was amazing, there was probably close to a 1,000 people there which was mind blowing and I couldn't have done it without the support of all of the businesses pitching in and donating stuff."

Hofstetter explains what she hopes people took away from the event.

"We had a lot of great speakers, good speeches, each speaker touched on a lot of different things, some personal, some history within the black culture. I'm hoping that everyone will walk away and see that it does happen in a Town like Woodstock. It can happen to all ages, young, old and just raise awareness and show that we should all be equal."

Woodstock Police Chief Daryl Longworth and several members of WPS were in attendance as well to provide safety but to also show their support. Hofstetter says he has asked her and Hannah to work with police to make changes.

"We will be working with them in creating resources for the community and educational items. I am very excited about that, as is Hannah because we want to make a difference. Woodstock does lack, especially schools, they are not taught black history anymore or the history behind racism and why this matters so much. So I have a good feeling working with the Police and creating more awareness in our community."

Longworth says he personally went to the event to show his support and the support of the Woodstock Police. He wanted to thank the organizers for taking the precautions that they did.

"We had quite a bit of dialogue, back and forth between the organizers and myself and I really thank them and respect them for taking the precautions that they did. They reached out to us for safety purposes and to get our input on how we felt about certain things. They really promoted the health coverings, face masks, social distancing and they really promoted that this was to be a peaceful event. I think it is fantastic that the opportunity was given for people to raise their voice and express their concerns and displeasure. From my stand point, I needed to be there to show that we are there to protect them and we are there to protect anyone at the rally. We were also there to stand with them because we cannot tolerate racism in our community and I wanted to make it explicitly clear that kind of behaviour would not be tolerated in the Woodstock Police Service as well."

Local Mayor Trevor Birtch was also in attendance and spoke to the crowd. If you missed the event you can check out this amazing video created by Tom Blackmore.