LOS ANGELES – A stand-up comic book without work, originally from New Jersey. An actor and conservative podcast presenter dressed in a white lab coat. An outfit that presented several successful campaigns for Congress in Los Angeles. And at least a few that were the day of the riot in the Capitol in Washington.
They were one of the furry crews of so-called anti-waxxers who had recently gathered at the entrance to the mass vaccination center at Dodger Stadium to contest the spread of a coronavirus vaccine.
The loosely formed coalition represents a new faction in California’s long-established anti-vaccine movement. And the protest was the latest sign that Californians have become the unlikely carriers of aggressive criticism of the vaccines, even though virus cases are still spreading in the state.
California, which had an average of 500 daily deaths linked to the virus in the past week, will soon become the state with the largest number of coronavirus deaths, surpassing New York.
Extreme-right-wing activists across the country have been pushing for months against mask rules, business closures, curfews and local public health officials, casting the government’s response to the virus as an intrusion on individual freedoms. But as masks and locks become an increasingly routine part of American life, some protesters have shifted the focus of their anger against the government to the Covid-19 vaccines.
Last week at Dodger Stadium, the same small but vocal group of protesters who had previously hosted anti-mask and anti-lockdown protests in the Los Angeles area disrupted a mass vaccination site that averaged 6,120 shots daily. About 50 protesters – some carrying signs reading “Do not be a laboratory rat!” and “Covid = Scam” – marched to the entrance, causing the Los Angeles Fire Department to close the city-run premises for about an hour.
The disruption illustrates the increasingly confrontational tendency of some opponents of the vaccine against the state, which has long argued that compulsory school-wide vaccination legislation represents government transgression. Many were already skeptical about vaccine science, after reading online disinformation websites claiming that vaccines caused early childhood autism, a claim that has long been refuted.
In California, the anti-vaccine movement has been popular among celebrities in Hollywood and wealthy parents for decades, while state lawmakers passed one of the most stringent mandatory vaccination laws for children in 2015. Previously, parents preferred to seek vaccinations through exemptions. claim that vaccines were contrary to their personal beliefs, but the law ruled out the option. The popularity of these releases has led to vaccination rates dropping to 80 percent or lower at public and private schools and kindergartens in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and other affluent communities in Los Angeles.
“Anti-vaccine attitudes are as old as vaccines themselves,” says Richard M. Carpiano, a professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Riverside, who studies the anti-vaccine movement. ‘The other thing connected to this is the wellness movement, the idea that of course is better. There is a wider kind of mistrust about Big Pharma and about medical care and medical professions. There is this real market for dissatisfaction that can really grip these groups. ”
In the Covid-19 era in California, opponents of vaccines increasingly aligned themselves with pro-Trump, and working classes who are sometimes eager to adopt extreme tactics to express their beliefs.
Anti-vaccine activists in the state are sometimes aggressive. But in the last two years, and in the months of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been an increase in confrontational and threatening tactics.
They assaulted a lawmaker in Sacramento and threw menstrual blood at lawmakers in Senate Halls at State Capital, and last spring, the Orange County Chief Health Officer put pressure on him to resign by publicly disclosing the official’s home address. Last month, two weeks before the protest against the vaccination at the stadium, a group of women lawmakers threatened during a budget hearing in the Capitol and told senators that they ‘do not take your shot’ and that they ‘did not buy guns for free do not have’.
“I think the thing that matters most is that they escalate,” said State Senator Richard Pan, a pediatrician and Democrat who writes about vaccination legislation. Mr. Pan was beaten in the back by an anti-vaccine activist in 2019 and was the likely target of the bloodshed incident in the Senate chambers that year.
“This movement not only posts wrong or disinformation about vaccines or lies about vaccines, which in themselves can be harmful, but they bully aggressively, threatening and intimidating people trying to share accurate information about vaccines,” he said.
Protesters who attended and helped organize the Dodger Stadium demonstration said they did not want to enter the site and that they did not block the entrance. They blamed firefighters for overreacting to their presence and locked the gates, saying their goal was to teach those waiting for vaccinations but not to prevent them from driving in to get their shots fired. .
One of the protesters, a 48-year-old actor with the first name Nick, and who asked that her surname not be published due to death threats received by the group, said he did not believe any of the protesters had been part of it before. . anti-vaccine groups established in the state. “It all stemmed from the whole Covid-19 crisis,” he said. ‘It started with wearing the mask and has evolved to now worry about the vaccine. It’s all about civil liberties. ”
The main organizer, Jason Lefkowitz, 42, an emerging cartoonist and waiter at a restaurant in Beverly Hills, said the catalyst for the stadium protest was the death of Hank Aaron, the baseball legend who died on January 22 at the age of 86. . .
Mr. Aaron was vaccinated for the coronavirus in Atlanta on Jan. 5, and anti-vaccine activists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., seized his death to pull a link. The Fulton County medical examiner said there was no evidence he had an allergic or anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine.
“I’m not a violent person,” he said. Lefkowitz said. “No one in my group is violent or physical, but there are many people who do not want to take the vaccine or be forced into it.”
No one was arrested, but city officials, including the police chief, were alarmed by the symbolism and the global headlines – that a small group of vaccine opponents had temporarily closed one of the largest vaccination rooms in the country and walked away without a mask and sang. among older residents waiting in their cars for their vaccination appointments.
“The optics of it are that it appears that the protesters were able to mix in the line symbolically, and I think we have a greater public responsibility to ensure that the symbolism is not repeated,” said Chief Michel R. Moore told the Los Angeles. Police Commission during a virtual meeting.
Protesters were planning to return to Dodger Stadium and were more excited about the attention than they were discouraged by the criticism on social media. Mr Lefkowitz said he immediately saw it as a positive sign for his group after firefighters closed the gates.
“They help us indirectly, because now I’m like, ‘Oh, this is going to make the news,'” he said. Lefkowitz said.
The ease with which many of the protesters slipped from anti-mask to anti-vaccine ideology was seen in one Facebook live stream.
A protester on the ground, Omar Navarro, a regular Republican challenger to Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, told his Facebook viewers that he was “100 percent sure” that voter fraud led to President Biden’s victory , pointed to the attempt to recall the Democrats. California Governor Gavin Newsom called Democrats “the real virus.”
“They want to deceive us,” he said. Navarro said in the video. “They want to control us. They want to put this snout on our face, this mask, which I do not use. ‘
One of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in Southern California, Leigh Dundas, a lawyer, spoke a day before the riot in the Capitol in Washington and posted videos on social media when she stood outside the building on January 6. and shouts, “This is from the beginning 1776!”
In May it me. Dundas led an effort to turn the Orange County headquarters, dr. Nichole Quick, to force over her mask order, which was unpopular in the historically conservative province. Dr. Quick received death threats and gave a security note. During a meeting of the Board of Supervisors, Ms. Dundas dr. Quick’s credentials ridiculed, announcing her home address and saying she was going to let people do “calistas in masks on her front door, and when people started falling like flies, and they would, I was going to ask every first respondent in a 30 mile radius to roll lights and sirens to her front door. ‘
Dr. Quick resigned almost two weeks later.
Kenneth Austin Bennett, the activist who Mr. Pan, the state senator, was attacked, charged with criminal batteries and would be re-arrested within weeks. Rebecca Dalelio, who was arrested after shedding blood from the Senate gallery, is charged with assault on a public official and vandalism and had a pre-trial hearing this month. A spokesman for State Senator Toni G. Atkins, Senate President, said a report was submitted to law enforcement after the women made the threatening remarks about the gun in January.
Dr Pan said the lack of arrests at Dodger Stadium protest indicated that extremists against vaccine would feel encouraged.
“There is a history of people bullying and intimidating, and there are very few consequences for this, and so they escalate, and they escalate, and they escalate,” he said.
Jan Hoffman contribution made.