As Reopen California Protests Grow, Newsom Vows He Won't Be Swayed

Credit: Andrew Lombardi

As we covered Saturday, the first large-scale “Reopen California” protest occurred in Huntington Beach on Friday, much to the ire of California’s Karen crowd. As we also noted, what happened in Huntington Beach was the sign that Californians are at the tipping point and are ready to rebel against the totalitarians ruling the state.

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Reopen California protests took place in two more California beach cities over the weekend, with more scheduled throughout the week. While estimates vary, between 100 and 300 people protested in San Diego Saturday.

In addition to labeling the protesters as low-info racists, shutdown apologists are also terming the events as “thinly-veiled Trump rallies” or as being filled with rich white people in an effort to downplay them.

It’s apparent that there are a lot of Trump supporters on these rallies, but if it’s true that all of the people at the rallies are Trump supporters the fact that hundreds of them are gathering in various cities in the state, openly supporting Trump, should be a wake-up call for progressives in the state.

Gov. Newsom issued a statement Saturday acknowledging the protesters’ First Amendment rights while encouraging them to “practice physical distancing,” and warning that he was going to make his decisions based on “science” and not by “politics.”

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“I just want to encourage people that when you practice your free speech — which I don’t [just] embrace, I celebrate — just do so safely. This virus knows no political ideology. It doesn’t know if you are Republican or Democrat, supporting the president, opposing the president, so practice physical distancing.

“Make sure that you are not infecting others. Even if you feel healthy and have no symptoms, you can spread this.

“We are going to do the right thing, not judge by politics, not judge by protests, but by science.”

Sorry, Gavin, Californians have seen enough of your decisions that were apparently based on “science” and not “politics.”

Sunday’s protest location was Encinitas, a city in northern San Diego County. Former MLB player Aubrey Huff caught some video footage, saying, “This is what freedom looks like, bitches!”

As Encinitas started to trend on Twitter, Newsom’s office tweeted out a reminder that reopening would be based on his crazy, unachievable six-point plan:

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While there haven’t been large-scale protests in Los Angeles (yet), more and more residents have been ignoring #SaferAtHome orders, as evidenced by traffic on the freeways.

As mentioned in prior articles, coronavirus infections in California and related hospitalizations and ICU admissions have been so far beneath projections that they’re not even in the same galaxy. The state has been shut down for a month and Newsom expects total shutdown for at least another month. It’s expected that nearly 2 million Californians will have filed for unemployment by the end of April, and as of April 19th there have been 1,100 coronavirus deaths throughout the state.

Californians are rightly fed up by the overkill response, and actions like this (perpetrated by the City of Los Angeles) don’t make it any better:

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Many counties, including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Ventura, are enforcing mandatory mask use while outside your home, except for “people who are experiencing homelessness.”

San Diego County Sheriff’s deputies handed out 21 citations to people who were sitting in their cars watching the sunset.

Could, perhaps, some of this time, money, and energy be spent providing masks to homeless people and cleaning up homeless encampments, where the disease is much more likely to run rampant?

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