OLYMPIA — Hundreds of liberty-loving Washingtonians took to the evergreen tree-lined streets surrounding the capitol building in Olympia on Saturday to protest masks and COVID-19 vaccination mandates. The peaceful crowd included supporters standing against mandatory vaccinations and masks, and friends gathered with families wearing matching “anti-vax mandate” t-shirts, pulling wagons filled with snacks and bottled water, waving American flags and signs reading “my body my choice” and “informed consent!” People from all walks of life came together to protest Governor Jay Inslee’s extraordinary measures. The disruption of car horns, chants, and excitement of the protestors on the street made talking to your neighbor pleasantly difficult and only encouraged the enthusiastic crowd.
According to the Epoch Times, Washington State’s requirement that all teachers and school staff be fully vaccinated as a condition of employment “marks the strictest school vaccine mandate in the United States.”
Yards away from the demonstration, the far-left Democrat governor sat in his mansion, hopefully surveying the land, as protesters clad in red, white, and blue chanted “USA, USA.” Participants enthusiastically protested against the proclamation decreed by Inslee on August 9, requiring some 60,000 state employees and all healthcare workers to be fully vaccinated by October 18 or look for employment elsewhere.
“We have essentially what is a new virus at our throats,” said Inslee during a press conference in early August. “A new virus that is twice as transmittable.”
Washington has among the highest rate of vaccinated adults in the country, with 70 percent jabbed with either the Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson medicines administered to millions of Americans to treat COVID-19.
Yet according to State Secretary of Health Umair Shah, there are “unfortunately too many of our fellow Washingtonians who have not gotten their vaccine thus far.” Continued Shah, “they are not just unvaccinated, they are unprotected. And they are a big reason why our state is once again seeing a dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases.”
Washington State Senator Mike Padden (R-Spokane Valley), who opposes the mandates, has argued that, “They [Washingtonians] don’t deserve to be bullied and threatened into putting something into their body that they don’t want,” adding, “this is not only unnecessary, and likely to result in greater rejection of the vaccine, but it’s a violation of civil liberties.”
Several Seattle-based corporations are following Inslee’s lead, including Bill Gates’s tech company Microsoft, which is requiring all employees working in its company buildings to be fully vaccinated.
Saturday’s event featured more than a dozen speakers, with Washington State Ferry workers rallying alongside elected officials, such as Representative Jim Walsh (R-Aberdeen). Taking the mic from activist Glen Morgan, creator of WetheGoverned.com, Walsh told the crowd, “This issue [COVID mandates] is bigger than the governor’s proclamation mandates. This issue is about fear. It’s about establishment politicians and policymakers using fear to prey on a free people.”
“Now is the time to wake up! When you hear of these mandates, when you hear of these proclamations, remember the hierarchy of public policy and law. The highest and strongest form of law is the U.S. Constitution…. A proclamation made lawfully that results in unlawful consequences or outcomes is not lawful.”
Seventy-one-year-old Vietnam vet Art Braden, a former computer salesman now working as a shuttle-bus driver for Seattle Children’s Hospital, does not fear COVID-19. Having served two tours with the Air Force in Vietnam, Braden is prepared to be fired from his job, telling The New American that he is determined not to get the jab. He is not alone. “One guy already quit,” said Braden, referring to his transportation colleagues. “There are four or five others I know of who won’t get the shot. Our transportation department is 20-22 people, so it’s not very big.”
The Bothell resident said he had been at the rally since 9:00 a.m.; he was the first one to arrive. He explained that he was hired by Children’s Hospital because “he could talk to people and he had been a Boy Scout.”
His military friends, one who is former Air Force and another who is former Army, are resisting the mandates, according to Braden. “Even though military guys have to get vaccines all the time. Many of them will get the shot without even thinking about it, but many of them, about 30 percent will not get this vaccine.”
Also maintaining a presence at the rally, with a table sporting t-shirts and signs promoting the effort to recall Governor Inslee (RecallInslee.org), C Davis told The New American that the campaign has had a difficult road. The organization RecallInsleee.org has filed petitions to begin the recall and been denied on the basis of technicalities multiple times by Democrat judges. Davis hopes the recall will be on the ballot on the 2022 election.
Davis believes Inslee is not paying attention to the recall but was definitely noticing the rally. He said an “Antifa guy” had promised to show up at the rally and “shoot him in the back.” Davis chuckled, “I told him, how about you do it in the front.” No Antifa appeared to be at Saturday’s protest, but Plover confirmed the group’s presence is “big” in Seattle. “They like soft targets.”
Davis began the recall effort on January 21 after he saw “something amazing.” After 28 years in Olympia, he said he saw “people getting involved.” He described seeing cars driving up the interstate with American flags and thought “we can’t lose that.” After the 2020 presidential election, people were discouraged, said Davis. “What happened in those five swing states, will we ever know?”
Davis continued, “We have our problems here. Yes, we have [voter] fraud, but fraud isn’t what happened in the governor’s race.” Davis explained how Republican gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp, a former police officer and businessman who challenged Inslee for the governor’s seat in 2020, made a few mistakes by “not courting that eight percent that he really needed. He didn’t expand his message to what those people wanted to hear.”
Though a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment, Culp wasn’t going to get elected on that single issue, said Davis. “Of course, I’m not going to vote for someone who is anti-Second Amendment, but that’s not going to get you elected.” According to Davis, “Culp needed to work on the swing vote, and he didn’t. He started to fall into his comfort zone.”
Davis’s final words rang true amidst the thinning voices of the crowds, as the last rays of the afternoon sun blazed brightly between the branches of the voluminous green trees: “Get out of your comfort zone,” he said. “Because that is the only way you’re going to win.”
