We were told early in the campaign that you could measure your success by how hateful the Internet trolls are towards you. For most of the time the campaign has chosen to ignore and not give these ignorant antisocial fools any oxygen. Ignoring them is fine to a point, however yesterday one of these antisocial misfits stepped over the line and in an attempt to sully our campaign’s reputation and dragged both ANZAC Day and the RSL into an argument that simply did not exist. A handful of serial pests have trolled this campaign mercilessly. At no point have they ever put up a solid argument for McDonald’s, instead their modus operandi is to make personal attacks, lie and slander. In one on going case being prepared for court, defamation, of which our legal team believe to be some of the worst they have encountered. On many occasions both the Federal and State police have had to become involved as some of their activities moved from hiding behind a keyboard to stalking, damage to cars, theft of campaign property and to distribution of racist and pornographic material designed simply to ridicule and demonise a legitimate and well supported grassroots campaign. After a recent community meeting attracting hundreds of locals and including a former Police Minister they called local police claiming our campaign openly called for vandalism and blackmail to further our aims. It was a blatant waste of police time and resources which is still being investigated. Yesterday one well-known offender crossed the line. The admin’s of this page feel it necessary to make comment to clarify our position to such scandalous and highly offensive comments. Melbourne’s 3AW Drive host, Tom Elliott regularly takes talkback under the topic “Word on the Street”. During yesterday ’s show a local woman (known to campaigners as a provocateur) called in to claim that the No McDonald’s in the Dandenong Ranges campaign were planning to disrupt and protest the Upwey RSL’s ANZAC Day dawn service over their decision to accept donations of food from McDonald’s Tecoma. Let’s be 100% clear. NMITDR had NO plans to do anything like this. We respect importance of ANZAC Day and the RSL as a well respected community organisation. This is a horrendously baseless accusation and an incredibly offensive and slanderous insult to all community members and supporters of campaign. The fact that this morning’s dawn service went ahead without incident is testament to how wrong this accusation was. Many supporters of NMITDR attended this morning’s service and showed the RSL the respect that they so much deserve on this important day. For a few in the community to attempt to politicise the RSL and the dawn service by drawing them into such a lie service is quite frankly extremely offensive. At no point did NMITDR take a position on the RSL’s sponsorship decision and at no point was a protest, boycott and coordinated attack on the RSL planned. This was an outrageous allegation perpetuated by a small group of social misfits. They are cowards who hide behind fake identities They know very well that what they purported to be ‘truth’ is simply the most malicious and underhanded lie that they could come up with to not only denigrate this community, but with the purpose of also causing fear and disruption to the enjoyment of ANZAC day proceedings by those returned soldiers, and their families, who they hoped would believe their horrendously abhorrent tale. These individuals view this whole issue as some sort of sick game in which to score imaginary ‘points’ against the members of the community involved in this campaign. They have dragged the RSL into their lies. This is a new low altogether and a horrendous allegation that we cannot ignore. The RSL was called by 3AW, and put to air, and they explained their concerns. After that our campaign spokesperson also called in to refute the allegation. Whilst the campaign is always happy to defend ourselves, the so called McDonald’s supporters put the RSL and returned service men and women in a position that they did not warrant, simply to score cheap points. Further to the discussion on 3AW a campaign member made direct contact with Upwey RSL President David Eaton and made it very clear that this horrible allegation was a complete lie designed purely to demonise our campaign at the unnecessary expense of the RSL and its members. David was gracious and appreciated the call and confirmed to our campaigner that the RSL fully understood that the allegation was nothing more than a malicious rumour. He extended our campaign and all community members an invitation to attend the dawn service if anyone wished. Many of course did attend. Far too many times this campaign has turned the other cheek to the antisocial trolling and bullying, today we say STOP! The trolls were caught out yesterday. They played a desperate game and in doing so dragged a well-respected organisation such as the RSL into their childish folly. NMITDR says enough is enough!