Tag: civil disobedience

Across the country, government officials are tightening and reimposing curfews, stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, and other restrictions as COVID-19 numbers climb. But with public patience over lockdowns wearing thin, many individuals and local authorities openly reject rules that drive people to poverty and despair. County sheriffs in California, New York, North Dakota, Oregon and elsewhere say they’ll have nothing to do with enforcement efforts and spar with governors who resent such independence.

It’s the rebellious spirit of the earlier sanctuary city and Second Amendment sanctuary movements, amplified by the pressures of the pandemic into an eruption of what some legal scholars call “punitive federalism.” Get used to it, because our politically polarized era offers fresh soil for such dictates and defiance.

California’s revolt is especially widespread. “All told, over a third of Californians live in a county with a sheriff promising not to enforce the governor’s stay-at-home order,” Reason‘s Christian Britschgi pointed out this week. Ironically, when Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to withhold funds from jurisdictions that ignore his dictates, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco snapped back that the governor was behaving just like President Trump, who California’s elected officials have criticized for using money in an effort to extract compliance.

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Echoing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned city residents this week to prepare for a “full shutdown” as part of ongoing efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. The two elected officials better not hold their breath waiting for compliance. Evidence from around the country shows that many Americans are thoroughly sick of impoverishing, socially isolating lockdown orders, and are revolting against the often-hypocritical politicians who issue them.

“The governor said in a New York Times interview over the weekend that we should prepare for the possibility of a full shutdown. I agree with that,” Mayor de Blasio told interviewers on December 14. “We need to recognize that that may be coming and we’ve got to get ready for that now, because we cannot let this virus keep growing.”

The mayor commented following Cuomo’s ban on indoor dining at New York City restaurants. That was issued a week after Staten Island residents cheered bar owner Daniel Presti, who was arrested for defying pandemic restrictions. Days later, Presti ran his car into a sheriff’s deputy who sought to rearrest him for continuing to serve patrons. Both of the deputy’s legs were broken.

While Presti’s level of violent resistance against lockdowns is much too extreme, he’s not alone in his opposition. From coast to coast, businesses and individuals are ignoring restrictive rules that threaten their livelihoods, stifle social contact, and threaten to strangle the necessary interactions of everyday life.

“Another shutdown just isn’t an option for us,” the Seven Sirens Brewing Company of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, announced last week on its Facebook page. “We, and thousands of other small businesses throughout the country simply will not survive. […] After speaking with our bank, staff members, families, attorneys, and local government officials…we have decided we will not comply with future shutdown mandates. We will continue to operate with the same, proven-safe measures we implemented 5 months ago.”

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