Protesters vs Protesters
27th April 2020 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Columnist
The death count is mounting and the number of cases due to the novel coronavirus continues to increase amid pronouncements that curves are flattening. In the middle of all this, we see anti-quarantine protesters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Washington, California, Kentucky and Vermont calling for their states to be reopened in direct opposition to the federal guidelines.
Simultaneously, nurses on the front lines of treating coronavirus victims are protesting outside the White House demanding the administration take action to acquire more personal protective equipment (PPE), while reading aloud the names of 50 nurses who have died of coronavirus.
On the one hand, we see protesters, under the guise of free speech demanding that states reopen, many without masks and not observing the rules of social distancing, and possibly endangering their own lives, their families’ lives, and the lives of innocent passersby. They’re waving Confederate flags, Swastika signs, and some are holding up Trump election signs. One hand-painted sign touted “Open Our Bars.”
We then see nurses, who are risking their lives everyday to save others, without the PPE that can provide some level of safety from being infected by the coronavirus.
What we are really witnessing from the anti-stay-at-home protesters, who reports say are being funded by Republican donors and right-wing extremists groups, is the same fevered and deranged attacks Confederate soldiers waged, in the attempt to overthrow the federal government, laws be damned, to keep Blacks enslaved.
The confederacy didn’t have a problem with dying for the Lost Cause. The Civil War claimed 600,000 American lives. Now we see their descendants willing to die to force the states in which they reside, to reopen their economies. Never mind that more Americans will certainly die, and their hospitals will be overrun with coronavirus cases.
And reports show that some of these 21st Century Confederates also are elected officials. Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp has issued reopening orders for non-essential businesses such as nail and beauty salons, barber shops and tattoo parlors.
Five states never implemented stay-at-home orders: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem refused to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, saying it was the job of individuals, not the government, “to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home.”
Even in the face of the 300 workers in her state being stricken with the coronavirus at the Smithfield pork processing plant, the biggest in the nation, Noem is Trump loyal. She announced that her state would start trials of the hydroxychloroquine, the unproven drug Trump has touted for use in coronavirus cases. Trump has previously admitted that his company had a small interest in the drug’s manufacturer.
Kentucky’s Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently said states and cities can file for “bankruptcy” and that he is not in favor of bailing out the states, many of which have run up huge deficits to pay for the coronavirus pandemic that is claiming lives and overtaxing medical facilities.
“Somebody should tell them that the Civil War is over,” New York’s Republican Congressman Peter King said in response to McConnell’s assertion.
Republicans like to claim Abraham Lincoln as the star of their party, but today’s Republicans are more like the Reconstruction Democrats, including President Andrew Johnson, whose lenient policies towards the Confederate states led to the overthrow of reconstructed state governments, such as in Louisiana. Johnson, like Trump, was impeached for abusing the powers of his office.
And like the Confederate slave-owners, today’s protesters don’t care how many people might die if states are re-opened before the virus is effectively contained.
Of course, reports that most of the people dying from the coronavirus are African Americans, Hispanics, and the elderly might be the main reason for such carelessness and false bravado. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told Tucker Carlson of Fox News, “No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’” But if they had? “If that is the exchange, I’m all in,” Patrick, 69, said.
In their zeal to get back to business as usual, the anti-quarantine protesters have overlooked a few facts.
Even if all businesses, large and small, reopened tomorrow, will there be an on rush of customers to patronize them?
This article originally published in the April 27, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
