BOSTON (CBS) — Protesters gathered outside the Massachusetts Statehouse Monday afternoon to call for non-essential businesses to reopen. The rally’s organizers also called the state’s stay-at-home advisory unconstitutional.
“Freedom” and “USA” chants erupted through the crowd.
“We don’t want your shutdown anymore,” conservative radio personality Jeff Kuhner said into a microphone. He helped organize the rally, which drew hundreds of Trump supporters.
Huge crowd outside of the MA Statehouse calling for the governor to end the lockdown and reopen businesses. State Police are controlling the crowds and managing traffic on Beacon Street. #WBZ
Lots of people standing close together with no mask on. pic.twitter.com/CkvAMYBYPJ
— Tiffany Chan (@TiffanyChanWBZ) May 4, 2020
“The only thing that [Gov. Charlie] Baker is doing by keeping the businesses from opening is causing more people to become victims by losing their jobs, losing their businesses,” said attendee Louis Murray. “If you want to wear a mask, you can wear a mask. We’re Americans, we’re individualists.”
A woman added, “We are all essential, not just you, Governor Baker.”
Last week, Gov. Charlie Baker announced non-essential businesses would remain closed until at least May 18. The stay-at-home advisory and ban on gatherings of more than 10 people are also scheduled to end the same day.
Time for Charlie to change his party affiliation so we can get a real Republican candidate.
Take a good look you lunatic Mayor and Governor…..the masses have begun to rise up against you new police state. Can you say “Herd Immunity.”
The virus is in the general population. All the ridiculous masks in the world will not reverse it…too late…..
A bunch of selfish, self-entitled snowflakes on parade.
No snowflakes there pal. Hard working Americans, who by the way would of been at work if this phony shut down wasn’t going on, who just want to be back at work and want their rights restored. Maybe you’re happy be pushed around by a tyrant but us real Americans aren’t taking any more of it
Oh, the tyranny! I’m sure Baker will end the quarantine tomorrow thanks to this protest….
Those like Rizzo and the clown calling himself God have no issue bending over, grabbing their ankles and letting the Government drive ’em. Thank you sir may I have another.
1) There is no herd immunity to this, having antibodies does not confer immunity.
2) No one is under lockdown, obviously, people are free to leave their houses.
3) A legal quarantine has been called to prevent spread of a deadly pathogen.
4) Many of the people in this crowd today will be dead in 3 weeks.
5) Trumpism is a cult of not smart not educated non-thinking people.
Go home, stay home, don’t spread the virus, and the contagion will slow down and become manageable…
or
…keep protesting, not wearing a mask in public, not social distancing, and you will be infected soon, possibly dead soon, possibly infect and kill others.
Think. I have noticed that Trumpists are very emotional, run by their emotions, very reactive, not mature. Use your brain. Think. Be an adult, make intelligent decisions.
take a chance, take a chance, pull down your pants. ha ha ha
He is just covering his …. and his political career at the expense and each and every resident of Massachusetts. What a leader! What a shame!
Stand firm Governor and Mayor. Rational and thinking individuals have your back! Stay safe
And if you do happen to get sick, you can just lay in the sun drinking bleach. Right?
Not everyone there was a Trump supporter. I was there (with a mask and not in the tight part of the crowd), didn’t vote for Trump (voted Johnson/Weld in utter disgust with both candidates), and I also oppose the business closures.
These closures WILL force small owners out, which will force them to sell their real estate cheaply to giant corporations. Congratulations, you will get America that is nothing but mega-corporations and gigantic government, and then you will be a slave to them forever with no alternatives. Why do you think the stock market is still, inexplicably, fairly far up, in the middle of a pandemic and on the cusp of the worst economic depression in human history?
So, I am opposing the lockdowns from a LEFT/libertarian perspective (although the right is technically legally correct that rights traditionally may not be THIS severely abridged in a state of emergency; there is established constitutional precedent that governments may only use the LEAST restrictive measures, which the current measures are not, and states cannot override any rights incorporated under the 14th amendment – if it counts for abortion, it counts for assembly).
Also, if Baker is mandating masks, then why can’t businesses open if everyone is wearing them? They either work or not. If they work, then it should be safe enough to go back to work NOW, in most environments. Just keep telework where you can. If masks don’t work, the mandate is beyond idiotic, just mindless police-state Corona Theater mirroring the mindless Security Theater of taking off your shoes and putting everything in 3-oz bottles at the airport. So which is it?
We should open reasonably SAFE businesses, not essential businesses.. So no schools or stadiums for a while, but golf and residents-only beaches with capacity limits should be fine. I want all businesses to establish “senior shopping” safety days/hours, not just grocery stores or warehouse clubs. Restaurants may be outdoor only for a while, like NH is doing. You aren’t required to patronize them if you are scared, or maybe a vulnerable population. This isn’t difficult. If they are coordinating with NH, an extension to May 18 is stupid — NH reopens May 11, and is going to have a fleet of MA plates if Baker cannot find a way to coax restless people with severe cabin fever to stay cooped up in MA as the weather gets nicer. Folks were willing to put up with it when it was cold, but nobody’s going to stay cooped up inside when it’s 80 degrees all summer.
The push-back is rising into an unstoppable tsunami, and the smart play would be to have a plan to cope with it.
You seem like you thought this through, here are some additional points to consider.
You may be right about small businesses going out of business, we should be helping them stay afloat during these times in any way we can, but opening right now is not the answer. This could be an entire discussion in itself. If store owners didn’t need to have their business open to survive, they could just remain closed until further notice without issue.
What “rights” are being infringed on? You will not be incarcerated for going outside or not wearing a mask. You will not be incarcerated for assembling to protest. No rights are being infringed on here. All the rules in place allow for is for businesses to escort someone off their premises if they deem the person a potential threat to the health of their other customers.
The problem with “if masks are mandated why can’t businesses open if everyone is wearing them” is your double conditional. Even if masks are mandated, that doesn’t mean everyone is going to wear them. You said you were at that gathering, do you really truly honestly think that those people would wear masks if it was mandated? Or would they just start protest the mask restriction as a violation of some made up “right” of theirs? Masks work if everyone is wearing them, if everyone in the state was smart enough to understand that, we wouldn’t have to close businesses. But there are a lot of idiots out there that think it’s their god given right for everyone to cater to their desires, and those people will refuse to take the health and safety of everyone else into account. It’s classic bitter irony that the people who are protesting for businesses to open are the very reason we had to close them in the first place.
The problem with “SAFE” businesses opening, is where you draw the line. You say we should open golf courses because it’s “reasonably safe”, but as soon as you do, those golf courses will be flooded with people and it suddenly becomes not “reasonably safe”. Putting capacity limits on businesses will cause people to congregate outside waiting to get in, and will accomplish the exact opposite of “safe”. It’s an all or nothing thing so that people’s activities can be distributed thinly enough across establishments that capacity limits don’t cause people to just “wait outside”, and instead “go somewhere else”. Even that causes another problem though, the “it’s my god given right to do what i want” idiots aren’t going to accept “sir/ma’am, you can’t come in here, we’re at our limit”. You’re expecting irrational people to behave rationally, and that’s a disaster waiting to happen.
The push-back may be rising, but giving in to the pushback will only succeed in causing the death toll to rise as well.
The fact that the GOVERNMENT has decided who and what are essential should worry everyone and if it doesn’t then you need to talk to a Native American.. Sure let’s give the government unlimited power……What could go wrong?
European immigrants have been screwing over Native Americans since they emigrated to America. Don’t blame the government for screwing them over, blame the people for wanting them to be screwed over.
Stories like these are the BIGGEST problem we have in dealing with this disease, period. The news/media outlets need to entice fear and panic in people to keep them tuning in to generate those advertising dollars. They want you to believe that any one who catches the disease is dead. This is simply not true. The vast, vast majority are surviving this illness, just like the flu. What the reports don’t tell you are the other comorbidity factors involved in people’s deaths, obesity diabetes, high blood pressure, hear disease, etc. The odds of a healthy person dying of COVID-19 is very low. I find it appalling that most all reports of COVID-19 deaths never contain any of the comorbidity factors that contributed to the individuals death – the news/media outlets should be ashamed of themselves for promoting such fear and panic in these already stressful times.
People with 99.2% of all covid deaths also had at least one underlying disease, with 88% having at least two underlying diseases. At least 10,700 people in New York are thought to have covid-19 around the time when the first person in New York was diagnosed with it. And at least 17-20% are thought to have antibodies in the US now, which means the death rate is around 0.002-0.003%. This also means survival rate of 99.997-99.998% if you get covid..
Do your research.
Could you cite your numbers? That’s are some very interesting data, i’m interested in seeing the sources for myself and looking further into them.
Can’t we just either arrest or at least put into protective custody people like this who do not adhere to the social distancing guidelines? Maybe they should be social distancing laws at this point? I fully sympathize with those small business that have not been allowed to reopen as I have been fortunate enough to have stayed employed; but these protesters are endangering us all and only prolonging the hospitalization plateau.
Then we’d be actually infringing on the rights they think we already are (but aren’t).
Unfortunately, it’s their right to be this way, and are entitled to their opinion, and as much as I wholeheartedly disagree with their view, it’s their right to express it.
If they start actually attacking people by sneezing/coughing on them on purpose, without a mask… that becomes domestic terrorism. There may already be laws in place that would allow police to arrest them at that point.
Too bad we didn’t grab this virus by the p***y from the get go…. could have avoided all of this. If we didn’t even wait; because when you’re a star, you can do anything…