More than 100 members of the public, as well as current, former and aspiring MPs, gathered on North West Point Road in West Bay Saturday afternoon to make their feelings known over Indigo Divers’ ‘riff-raff’ post.
The demonstration was a reaction to a social media post by Indigo Divers last week that referred to people making unauthorised use of its dock as ‘riff-raff’. The post accompanied a photo of a gate that owners Chris and Katie Alpers erected on their private dock recently, which they said had been erected to “keep the riff raff out and the fishermen off our dock”.
The post – as well as the emergence of online photos of Chris Alpers in blackface that appear to have been posted on his Facebook page in 2013 – sparked an online firestorm locally.
Many of the participants in Saturday’s peaceful protest near the dive outfit’s site beside West Bay Public Beach held up signs that declared such messages as, ‘You insult one of us, you insult all of us’, ‘Call us riff raff to our face’ and ‘Tired of the disrespect’.
Julie Hunter, who is running for office in West Bay West, said the Indigo Divers social media post was disrespectful, and she queried whether the Alpers “have reached out to any of those people they’re calling riff-raff or offered them any employment”.
Another aspiring candidate, Jewel Hydes, who plans to run in West Bay Central, said the controversial photos of Chris Alpers, which appeared on his Facebook page, were “derogatory” and “unacceptable”.
Chris Alpers, in an interview with the Compass last week, said he had put up the gate because debris like “empty beer cans, used condom wrappers, fishing hooks, fish guts, bits of squid bait” was being left on the Indigo Divers dock overnight.
He claimed the post had not been intended to cause general offence and was directed at the people responsible for the mess.
West Bay South MP and former Deputy Premier André Ebanks, who was among the politicians at the demonstration, said government was in the process of determining whether Indigo Divers’ coastal works licence for the dock included a provision to allow a fence to be put in place.
He said he had joined the demonstration to show his support for the local community, which, following the Indigo Divers’ post, was left feeling “a sense of disrespect”.
He added that he felt this was “an example of a teachable moment, that the language that you use, the phrases that you use, and even if there is a mistake, how you handle the apology, should be of the standard that brings the community together rather than take it apart”.
Ebanks said that it appeared people “are largely of the opinion that protecting your private property rights is lawful … but this isn’t how we should be speaking to each other”.
The Alpers couple has said the ‘riff-raff’ comment was not aimed at Caymanians or any nationality in particular, but Ebanks said that because the majority of those who use the beach in West Bay are Caymanian, it was understandable that local people felt the comment was directed at them.
Former education minister Rolston Anglin, who is running for office in West Bay North, was also among the demonstrators.
Standing next to a sign he sponsored, showing the offending social media post and pictures of Alpers in what appears to be a controversial Halloween outfit, Anglin said the controversy highlighted a “vexing, seething undercurrent that we’ve had for decades” of Caymanians feeling undervalued.
“This has sparked a real debate around what immigration reform is going to look like on the other side of April 30th (election day),” he said.
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Do we have any comment from the protesters or the involved politicians relating to the litterers and whether this behaviour causes them concern also?.