Pumpkin Fest Organizer Defends Threatening ‘Self-Promoting Punk’

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The organizer of the annual Pumpkin Festival in Keene, N.H. said Monday that she threatened to “pull the plug” on a local reporter’s broadcast because his coverage of nearby violent riots was “dangerous and inciting.”

“When he heard about the trouble in the college neighborhoods, he chose to ‘do his job’ of being a Fox-news style ‘reporter,'” Ruth Sterling told TPM in an email. “His tone and language was deemed dangerous and inciting to a large, peaceful assembly.”

Parties around Keene State College, which abuts the festival area, devolved into riots Saturday night that led to destruction of property and arrests. Public access reporter Jared Goodell was reading out a statement from Keene State’s president, Ann Huot, during a live broadcast when Sterling repeatedly tried to grab his microphone.

“So if you think that inciting these people is a good idea, I am going to pull the plug on you,” Sterling said to Goodell. “Because you are a guest of the Keene Pumpkin Festival and I assigned you this spot. Do not alarm our guests.”

Sterling explained that she was just trying to keep festival attendees safe.

“I needed to keep 80,000 people safe,” she said in an email. “And one self-promoting punk could help me do that or TRY to impede me from doing that. I never regret when I try. Last night I was trying. I was not surrendering to fear, intimidation, threats.”

Watch the confrontation below:

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