Catalyst event used as ‘grandstanding opportunity’YOURWORD

• Published date: 29 September 2022
• Publication title: Mountain Scene

The national mask mandate had expired at midnight; discretion now lay with organisers as to whether events would require masks

For various reasons — including assurances already given to immune-compromised members of our community, who could otherwise not attend — we decided to keep the requirement.

We reconfirmed this with all registrants, ensured we had masks to give anyone who arrived without, and even arranged an optional meeting room with participation via audio-video feed in case anyone insisted on refusing a mask.

We were delighted that more than 200 members of our community accepted our invitation to attend the forum masked.

Catalyst volunteers, moderator David Williams, the Wakatipu High students that worked with us, and the candidates can all be proud of the result (bit.ly/catMayorVid).

There were a few who stood in the foyer, loudly complaining, but in the end chose the maskless meeting room option.

And then there were a different few, who turned up demanding our event be run on their terms and insisting on their entitlement to ignore our invitation’s requirements.

Catalyst volunteers welcoming arrivals were subjected to belligerent behaviour they found abusive and intimidating, to the point of questioning whether they want to be involved in running community events in future.

It seems a decision was taken by some to use our event as an opportunity for their own grandstanding, arriving only with the self-serving intent to abuse our volunteers and unleash their ‘‘this is discrimination’’ monologue as attendees streamed in.

One man seemed to have no interest in attending, but rather had come solely to create disruption and manufacture drama to capture on his camera video — aggressive and maskless, shoved right in the face of the first of several volunteers he challenged.

To what purpose?

The implicit bad faith of this is immensely disappointing, and it saddens us that there are members of our community who seemed comfortable supporting the actions of those who would sink so low.

In eight years, we have never had to consider audience and volunteer...