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Letter to the Editor: We should support people who protest Vail Resorts

Lee Mulcahy
Basalt

Tim McMahon, an Avon citizen employed at Beaver Creek, was fired and banned from skiing for putting a sign in the national forest on public lands leased to Vail Resorts in front of a snow stake. The sign was critical of Chairman Rob Katz suddenly giving employees 10 days to vacate Vail/Beaver Creek employee housing during the pandemic. 

Recently, Tim was arrested for protesting in a chicken suit carrying a sign that said “Vail Resorts informing J1’s by email that there is ample housing in the valley should be criminal.” Both cases may be headed to trial soon and are a waste of citizens’ hard earned money. The privatization of public lands is not acceptable. Neither is using a town’s police forces as political stormtroopers which, sadly, smacks of Russia or China.

The multinational industrial corporate ski duopoly of Vail and Aspen is not conducive to liberty and freedom. Company towns where groupthink thrives overreach way too often. Consequently, these corporate behemoths want to silence their critics, like Tim McMahon. We should all be grateful to people like the Chicken Man, as well as Michelle Siemer, Dan Herrick and Aspen’s Sandwich Board lady for standing tall in the face of corporate bullying. And we should call for the resignation of the captured supervisor of the White River National Forest, federal bureaucrat Scott Fitzwilliams, who allows this oppressive “white terror” designed to erode our civil rights. Public lands are public. Tim McMahon’s ban and arrest at Vail is a continuation of the political crackdown on all American citizens’ freedom of speech and expression and another intimidation of civil society. It will contribute towards more mistrust of our corporate government and hostility in society. Tim’s GoFundMe is here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/2zgtzg-materials-parking-and-lawyer-fees.


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