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LOS ANGELES – An unemployed stand-up comedian from New Jersey. A conservative actor and podcast host in a white coat. A gadfly who led several unsuccessful campaigns for the Los Angeles Congress. And at least a few who were in Washington on the day of the riot on Capitol Hill.
They were part of the motley crew of so-called anti-vaxxers who recently converged on the entrance to the Dodger Stadium mass vaccination site to protest the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine.
The weakly formed coalition represents a new faction in the long-established California anti-vaccine movement. And the protest was the latest sign Californians have become unlikely standard bearers for aggressive vaccine critics even as cases of the virus continue to spread across the state.
California, which has recorded an average of 500 daily virus-related deaths over the past week, will soon become the state with the highest number of coronavirus deaths, overtaking New York.
For months, far-right activists across the country have rallied against mask-wearing rules, trade lockdowns, curfews and local public health officials, presenting the government’s response to the virus as an intrusion into individual freedoms. But as masks and lockdowns become an increasingly common part of American life, some protesters have shifted their anti-government anger to Covid-19 vaccines.
Last week, at Dodger Stadium, the same small but vocal group of protesters who had previously held anti-mask and anti-lockdown protests in the Los Angeles area disrupted a mass vaccination site that averages 6,120 shots per day. About 50 protesters – some carrying “Don’t be a lab rat!” Signs and ‘Covid = Scam’ – marched to the entrance and forced Los Angeles firefighters to shut down the city-run site for about an hour.
The disruption illustrates the increasingly confrontational bent of some of the state’s vaccine opponents, who have long argued that mandatory school vaccine laws are overbroad by the government. Many were already skeptical of the science of vaccines, after reading disinformation sites online claiming that childhood vaccines are responsible for autism, a claim long disproved.
In California, the anti-vaccine movement has been popular for decades among Hollywood celebrities and wealthy parents, gaining momentum when state lawmakers passed one of the country’s toughest mandatory vaccination laws for children. in 2015. Previously, parents had chosen not to be vaccinated by asking for exemptions claiming the vaccines conflicted with their personal beliefs, but the law ruled out that option. The popularity of these exemptions has led to vaccination rates dropping to 80% or less in public and private schools and preschools in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and other affluent communities in the Los Angeles area.
“Anti-vaccine attitudes are as old as the vaccines themselves,” said Richard M. Carpiano, who is a professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California at Riverside and who studies the anti-vaccine movement. “The other thing that has to do with that is the wellness movement, this idea that the natural is better. There is a broader type of distrust in Big Pharma, healthcare, and the medical professions. There is a real market of discontent that these groups can sort of grab hold of. “
During the time of Covid-19 in California, vaccine opponents increasingly aligned themselves with pro-Trump, working class people at times keen to adopt extreme tactics to express their beliefs.
Anti-vaccine activists in the state have been aggressive at times for a long time. But over the past two years, and in the months of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been an increase in confrontational and threat tactics.
They assaulted a lawmaker in Sacramento and shed menstrual blood on lawmakers in State Capitol Senate chambers in 2019, and last spring they helped pressure the Orange County health official to quash ‘he resigns by publicly revealing the home address of the manager. Last month, two weeks before the stadium vaccination protest, a group of women threatened lawmakers during a budget hearing on Capitol Hill, telling senators they were “not shooting your bullet” and that they “hadn’t bought weapons for nothing”.
“I think what is of most concern is that they are escalating,” said State Senator Richard Pan, a pediatrician and Democrat who drafted a law on vaccination. Mr Pan was punched in the back in 2019 by an anti-vaccine activist and was likely the target of the Senate chamber blood incident that year.
“This movement not only disseminates false or misinformed vaccine information or vaccine lies, which in itself can be harmful, but they also aggressively intimidate, threaten and intimidate people who try to share accurate vaccine information. “, did he declare.
Protesters who attended and helped organize the Dodger Stadium protest said they did not attempt to enter the site and did not block the entrance. They accused the firefighters of overreacting to their presence and shutting the doors, and said their aim was to educate those awaiting vaccinations, but not to prevent them from driving to the inside to get vaccinated.
One of the protesters, a 48-year-old actor whose first name is Nick and who asked that his last name not be released due to the death threats the group had received, said he did not believe that ‘none of the protesters were part before. anti-vaccine groups established in the state. “It’s all due to this whole Covid-19 crisis,” he said. “It started with wearing the mask and has evolved into concern about the vaccine now. It’s all about civil liberties.
Main organizer Jason Lefkowitz, 42, comedian and waiter at a Beverly Hills restaurant, said the catalyst for the stadium protest was the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron, who died aged 86 January 22. .
Mr Aaron was vaccinated against the coronavirus in Atlanta on January 5, and anti-vaccine activists including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have used his death to make a connection. The Fulton County medical examiner said there was no evidence he had an allergic or anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine.
“I am not a violent person,” Mr. Lefkowitz said. “No one in my group is violent or physical or anything, but there are a lot of people who don’t want to take this vaccine or be forced into it.
No one was arrested, but city officials, including the police chief, were troubled by the symbolism and global headlines – that a small group of vaccine opponents had temporarily shut down one from the largest vaccination sites in the country and walked and chanted without a mask. among older residents waiting in their cars for their immunization appointments.
“The optic of this is that it turned out that the protesters may have symbolically interfered with that line, and I think we have a greater public responsibility to ensure that this symbolism is not repeated,” said the chef Michel R. Moore in Los Angeles. Police commission in a virtual meeting.
Protesters were planning to return to Dodger Stadium and were more spurred on by the attention than disheartened by social media criticism. Mr Lefkowitz said after the fire department closed the doors, he immediately took this as a positive sign for his group.
“They’re helping us indirectly, because now I’m like, ‘Oh, this is going to be in the news,'” Lefkowitz said.
The ease with which many protesters have shifted from anti-mask ideology to anti-vaccine ideology was highlighted in a Facebook livestream.
A protester at the site, Omar Navarro, a frequent Republican challenger to Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, told his Facebook viewers he was “ 100% sure ” that electoral fraud led to the victory of the President Biden, touted the Democrat’s recall effort. California Governor Gavin Newsom and called Democrats a “real bug.”
“They want to cheat us,” Mr. Navarro said in the video. “They want to control us. They want to put this muzzle on our face, this mask, which I don’t use.
One of Southern California’s most prominent anti-vaccine activists, lawyer Leigh Dundas, spoke at a rally in Washington on the eve of the Capitol riot and posted videos to the media social as she stood in front of the building on January 6, shouting: “It’s 1776 again!”
In May, Ms Dundas led a campaign to expel Orange County health director Dr Nichole Quick for his mask order, which was unpopular in the historically conservative county. Dr Quick has received death threats and received a security detail. During a supervisory board meeting, Ms Dundas ridiculed Dr Quick’s credentials, announced her home address, and said she was going to ask people to do calisthenics with masks at his front door, and when people start dropping like flies, and they do, I will have every first responder within a 30 mile radius to roll the lights and sirens towards his door. entrance.
Dr Quick resigned almost two weeks later.
Kenneth Austin Bennett, the activist who attacked Mr. Pan, the state senator, has been charged with battery misdemeanor and was scheduled to be arraigned again in a few weeks. Rebecca Dalelio, who was arrested after shedding blood from the Senate gallery, has been charged with felony assault on a public official and criminal vandalism and has a preliminary hearing this month. A spokeswoman for State Senator Toni G. Atkins, president pro tempore of the Senate, said a report was filed with law enforcement after women made threatening gun-related remarks in January.
Dr Pan said the lack of arrests at the Dodger Stadium protest suggested anti-vaccine extremists would feel emboldened.
“There’s a story of people intimidating and intimidating, and there’s very little consequence in doing that, and so they escalate, and they escalate, and they escalate,” he said. .
Jan Hoffman contribution to reports.
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