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Opponents plan to strike back with silent protest in organizer’s Ala. city
By JOHN NORTH
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Under the banner of equality, women will be baring their breasts during the second annual topless rally this summer in downtown Asheville, according to the the website GoTopless.org.
The website lists Asheville as one of the nine U.S. cities that will have a topless rally on Aug. 26, which it notes is Women’s Equality Day. According to the website, Asheville’s rally will begin at 1 p.m. in Pack Square downtown. However, the City of Asheville’s events calendar shows the event permitted from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. in Pritchard Park.
Meanwhile, local conservative activists Carl Mumpower and Chad Nesbitt are once again mounting vigorous opposition to what they consider a sexual performance, possibly involving female minors who may be participants, or other minors who might observe the topless women. (Asheville police said no minors were involved last year.)
In addition to various activities, including a photo contest on Mumpower’s anti-topless rally website GoBrainless.com, Mumpower and Nesbitt are planning to bring a number of Asheville men to Huntsville, Ala., where Jeff Johnson, the topless rally promoter lives and works, to convene as four to six four-man prayer groups in the downtown as well as outside his Over the Rainbow Pediatrics.
“These groups will be conducting silent prayers on various street corners in both locations,” Mumpower and Nesbitt stated in an e-mail to Leah Ray of the Huntsville Police Department. “We may have information handouts explaining our reasons for being there, but we will not be carrying signs, speaking or conducting other, more disruptive, forms of protest.”
Their e-mail – a copy which Mumpower and Nesbitt sent to the Daily Planet – references “our permit application for a protest on Wednesday, August 15, 2012” at two locations in Huntsville.
“We are coming to bring visibility, the most positive way we know, to a gentleman ... in your community who manages a pediatric practice, moonlights as a clown for children and is the front man for topless activities and an upcoming topless rally in Asheville, N.C.,” the e-mail states.
The e-mail ends with a reference to “Topless, shameless and lawless — Asheville’s sexual performance street party is coming back ... Yes, that’s right. Asheville’s August 26th topless “rally” permit was submitted by a clown ... The same clown who brought and escorted topless women (was one of those a transvestite?) to our Bele Chere festival this past weekend (July 27-29).”
Mumpower is a former member of City Council, while Nesbitt is the past chairman of the Buncombe County Republican Party.
Last August, organizers held their first Asheville topless rally at Pack Square, drawing dozens of women who bared their breasts, as well as an estimated 2,000 mostly male onlookers — many of whom gawked, shot photographs with their cellphones, and cheered on the women as they removed their tops.
The event prompted a counter-protest a few weeks later. The nationwide rallies are intended to highlight inequality in the laws that allow men to go topless, but not women. However, it is legal in North Carolina for women to bare their breasts in public.
“So aside from guaranteeing a spectacle, we’re not sure what the rally will accomplish,” the Asheville Citizen-Times noted in a July 10 editorial about the upcoming event.
Mumpower has said that he will do everything he can to voice his opposing to the upcoming rally.
“I plan to do my creative best to draw as much negative attention to the degradation of our culture as I can,” Mumpower told the AC-T in July. “Every responsible media outlet and every responsible person in a position of power in this city was in total denial about what this was.”
With his website GoBrainless.org, Mumpower is promoting a photo contest during the topless rally. He said the goal is to deter what he believes will be inappropriate and illegal activity — and to capture evidence to show elected officials and police, if that does not happen.
“I believe the event degrades women,” Mumpower said. “But what I’m really fighting is the abuse of children and sexual performance in our public spaces.”He also said that Asheville was the only smaller city among those scheduled for a topless rally because the group knows it can get by with it here.
Meanwhile, GoTopless.org notes on its website that women may participate in the rally without baring their breasts.“
During the protests, women will have the choice of going fully topless, or wear red tape or something else to hide their (infamous!) nipples. They are also completely welcome to come and support this cause while being fully dressed, if they prefer.” (See following statement from GoTopless for details on its stance on its opponents.)
GoTopless issues statement on battle with conservatives
Livienne Love, who was a leader of last year’s topless rally in Asheville, was contacted via e-mail by the Daily Planet on Aug. 2 for her comments about the status of this year’s event, but she wrote back the following:“I’m no longer involved with GoTopless Asheville. I’ve moved back to California. I will forward your message on to the head of the organization, so that she can help you.”
Later Aug. 3, the Daily Planet received an e-mail from Kasyo Perrier of For GoTopless, who wrote, “Thank you for your request. Here is our statement on Asheville:
GoTopless vows to hold Asheville demonstration as conservatives attempt to block it
ASHEVILLE, N.C., July 31 – With local conservatives attempting to block an upcoming August 26 demonstration by women’s rights organization GoTopless in Asheville, N.C., GoTopless today released a statement declaring its resolve to continue fighting for gender equality under the Constitution, including the right to freely and legally go publicly topless as men do.
“We plan to hold our scheduled event in Asheville,” said GoTopless President and Spokesperson Nadine Gary. “It’s especially important that our message be heard there because some local politicians are making false accusations against our organization for their own purposes.”
She said Asheville conservatives, led by Carl Mumpower and Chad Nesbitt, recently sent a draft resolution to city officials in hopes of thwarting the August 26 event."
Their resolution stated that last year’s GoTopless rally included, among other things, activities involving sexual performances, fondling of breasts, direct participation by underage minors, and exposure of minors to sexual acts. “These are absurd accusations and they are completely false.”
Mumpower is using the accusations as a political springboard, according to Gary.
“To further his political ambitions, he’s taking our event grossly out of context,” she said. “Our upcoming demonstration is just that, a demonstration, and further, it’s a demonstration of something that is perfectly legal in Asheville. In fact, the right to go topless should be acknowledged as a woman’s constitutional rights across the United States.”
She said walking topless in the streets of Asheville has nothing to do with sexuality.“
It is Mr. Mumpower and the other opposing conservatives who are trying to turn our event into something blatantly sexual when it’s not,” Gary said. “This is exactly the point we’re trying to make by having the demonstration. Women are currently forced to hide their breasts because men like Mr. Mumpower can’t look at them without thinking of something sexual.
"Well, we’re sorry, Mr. Mumpower, but we won’t hide our breasts because of your sexual hangups.”
GoTopless is an offshoot of the International Raelian Movement (rael.org), a worldwide champion of human rights.
"Our aim is to highlight women’s constitutional rights, since men already have the right to go shirtless in public,” Gary said. “The entire point of our demonstrations is to emphasize the principle of gender equality. If women have to wear a top, so should men. The Constitution says nothing whatsoever about gender distinctions for clothing.”
Gary said many people across the country already support the GoTopless cause.
"Centuries of patriarchal, top-down religious education have trained women to be subservient to men, to be only child-bearers and homemakers and to remain chaste,” Gary said. “We must remember that it was less than 100 years ago that women finally won the right to vote in this country.“
Today, their emancipation is expanding to all aspects of life. Those who don’t want these rights for themselves can always turn them down. They can decide not vote, or decide not to do some of the jobs men do, and they can decide not to go topless. But neither they nor anyone else should try to impose these personal decisions on other women. That’s simply unconstitutional.”
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