Naperville resident Shannon Adcock and former Naperville City Councilman Kevin Coyne say efforts to halt their nominations to serve on city advisory boards will prevent the residents with similar views from being heard.
Last weekend, a letter and email writing campaign and an online change.org petition was launched to request Naperville Mayor Steve Chirico reconsider nominating Adcock to the Special Events and Cultural Amenities Commission and Kevin Coyne to the Naperville Public Library Board.
The petition questions Adcock’s views and those of Awake Illinois, the advocacy group she founded.
“Mayor Steve Chirico is planning to appoint Shannon Adcock – founder of far-right, anti-DEI, anti-Black History, anti-mask, and anti-LGBTQ Awake IL – to the City of Naperville SECA Commission. SECA stands for Special Events, and Cultural Amenities and has made grant awards to Naper Pride (LGBTQ organization) LWV (which Shannon publicly demonizes), and to cultural minority programs,” the petition says. “Shannon has personally attacked many people who do not agree with her (including attacking friends and family of those people) and has threatened to have teachers fired.”
Thursday, a similar online petition was set up on change.org in support of Adcock’s and Coyne’s appointments.
The petition says Adcock is “a kind and loving mother who is dedicated to community volunteerism. Upon engaging in transparent advocacy on issues of education and civil rights, a very worrisome contingent of extremists in the community began to threaten, harass, and defame her beginning early 2021. It’s been happening for over a year.”
Both online petitions were set up anonymously.
Coyne, who opted not to seek reelection to the council after a failed bid for a DuPage County Board seat, said he finds it ironic that the efforts to quash his nomination and that of Adcock are being conducted by people who speak about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion.
“But clearly, they are not sincere. What they really mean is they want to include people as long as those people only agree with their political ideology,” Coyne said
What’s hard to believe, he said, is the city is at a point where people with opinions not in line with the majority on the dais “need to be canceled and can’t even serve their community on a volunteer board.”
Adcock says she’s not backing down because if she bows out, “the cancel culture wins.”
“It’s absolutely, I think, symbolic of how we can no longer have differing viewpoints, dissenting opinions, diversity of thought, if this radical, cancel culture voice gets entangled in you. They seek to destroy you,” Adcock said.
After she lost a race for the Indian Prairie District 204 school board last year, Adcock said she was encouraged to stay involved, apply for an advisory board position and just keep her voice elevated in the community.
Adcock said she knew if she were nominated, people would object in social media posts, but not in the manner she’s seen this week.
In reference to Adcock, the opposition petition said, “An extremist like this has no business being appointed to a city commission that is supposed to promote equity for all.”
Adcock said there is no basis for the accusations and public defamation, “other than they just genuinely don’t like me.”
As far as her nomination to the SECA Commission, Adcock said she’s probably the most qualified of the people interviewed given her background in the photography business and growing up in the performing arts.
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“Nobody’s really cared to ask me about my personal experiences, whether it was on issues of LGBTQ or civil rights,” Adcock said. “But if they did, they would understand a little bit more about where I’m coming from in my world view.”
What they would see, she said, is her advocacy as a parent of three children and issues affecting children in education.
“Somehow they’ve just rounded up to assume that I’m somehow a bigot or prejudiced, hateful person,” Adcock said. “There’s nothing at all that they can ever leverage about that accusation.”
Coyne said he also finds it ironic that the people who raise questions about Adcock being vitriolic are far more so in the social media posts and rhetoric they espouse. “You can’t have it both ways,” he said.
He said much of the political discourse in Naperville has been taken over Naper Gals, which he describes as a “very extreme leftist group.”
“I’ve been active in Republican politics, and that is an absolute stopper; there’s no room for that in their world vision,” he said.
Naper Gals organizer Holly Hootman denies she’s a left-wing extremist, and neither is the group, she said.
“I know there’s a lot of independents and libertarians in the group. I myself am a moderate,” Hootman said. “I know we’ve had Republicans in the group. We’ve had Republican candidates in the group in the past.”
Not everyone in the Naper Gals Facebook group agrees all of the time, she said, particularly over issues like universal health care and gun control.
“At the end of the day, we all believe in affordable health care, we all believe in climate change and we all believe that people should have a FOID (firearms owner identification) card and lock the things up,” Hootman said.
What Hootman takes offense to are the inaccuracies in the online petition in support of Adcock and Coyne, such as, “This group of area women called ‘NaperGals’ are involved in the Democratic Party and based on their posts, have engaged in election rigging. In early 2021, they coordinated an effort to damage school board run by circulating a petition originally titled ‘t’ and after legal threat of libel, was changed to ‘does not support CRT (critical race theory).’ They used a woman of African-American descent to aid their efforts by asking her her correspond with and then go to the media.”
Hootman said Naper Gals has never engaged in election rigging nor did group members “use” anyone to correspond with Adcock to aid their efforts.
The petition opposing Adcock’s and Coyne’s appointments refers to the charges of racism and insensitivity that surfaced during the District 204 school board race over a reported email exchange between Adcock, a school board candidate, and fellow parent Asafonie Obed-Horton.
Obed-Horton said no one forced her to contact Adcock nor did she conspire with anyone.
“I am a mom of four children. I reached out to her about my concerns because what she had on her website was different, I felt, than she believed. I just wanted to have a conversation with her, honestly communicating with her,” Obed-Horton said.
When she emailed Adcock asking about culturally responsive teaching and its intent to address implicit bias, racism and privilege in public schools, Adcock’s reply included a suggestion that Obed-Horton and other parents open a charter school with culturally responsive teaching curriculum, Obed-Horton said.
“I do not believe that everyone that is in my circle should believe the same things that I believe, and I know we can agree to disagree on some things. I truly just wanted to speak with her,” Obed-Horton said. “I never imagined that she was going to respond the way that she did.”
Obed-Horton said it wasn’t until after stories were published that she was invited to join groups like Naper Gals.
The Naperville City Council is not scheduled to vote on the nominations for either board Tuesday, but residents will have the opportunity to provide their input during the public forum portion of the meeting.