Mar 29, 2021
Seattle March 2021 Anti-Mask Freedom Rally, a Healing Experience
by Staci Sprout
What many of my friends, family and colleagues consider as me going “off the rails” was spiritual medicine for me…and I can’t wait for the next gathering.
I’m a heterosexual white cis woman, a 50 year-old lifetime politically progressive social worker, and most of my friends are “quite concerned” about me. Why do they think I’ve gone crazy? Because I am not buying the covid story at face value, and I am choosing a mask exemption rather than wearing one. In 22 states in the U.S., that might now be in alignment with the government rules. But in Seattle, Washington, it’s unacceptable.
Some of the reactions I’ve endured, when being open about my choices:
You’ve become a Trump supporter/Republican!
No, I haven’t. But when I meet a Trump supporter nowadays, I am curious about why they supported — or still support — him. I’ve stopped condemning people for their political values, as I’ve found myself on the painful receiving end of condemnation of my own judgment since I started questioning covid. Condemnation doesn’t help with the polarity us/them divides currently crippling our healthy community. Connected, respectful conversation does.
At this rally, political signs, MAGA shirts or hats, weapons, and confederate flags were not allowed. As security, I was prepared (and scared) to approach anyone who brought them…but no one did.
You’re racist!
Yes, I do have unconscious bias, from growing up in a profoundly racist culture, which I see as an injury inside me that I seek to heal with a lifetime commitment to anti-racism learning and practice. I know I have a lot to learn. I wrote another article about why I feel so strongly about this issue that I am putting myself at odds of most who know me.
Though mostly white, this movement attracts people of many different racialized identities, as you can see in the pictures below. I support freedom of choice for everyone.
Before the march began, I did see a sign that said “Hugs Not Thugs” and asked if the (white) woman who brought the sign was aware that the word “thug” was often used as a racial slur against Black men. She said no, and immediately agreed to not use that sign. Instead, she made and marched with another one that said, “you were born free!”
You’re being selfish, endangering me/others.
I do not agree with this, as it is based on the belief that I am sick and thus my contaminated breath is a danger to others. I have no symptoms of disease other than deprivation of full-faced, kind human community. To date, I have seen no convincing evidence of asymptomatic spread of respiratory disease. In fact, from multiple credible non-pharma-funded medical experts, I understand the opposite to be true.
“People that are now purporting to ‘scientifically’ prove masks work are either being paid or being played…this just doesn’t work this way.” — Dr. Lee Merritt
However, I am acutely aware of how afraid other Seattleites are of unmasked me. Most of my masked neighbors no longer make eye contact nor greet me in passing; they now cross the street before coming anywhere near six feet close to me and my dog. If I approach someone else, I attempt to make eye contact, smile and say hello, and I am always careful to not enter anyone’s personal space long before I approach within six feet of them. But I’ve still had people yell at me or attempt to bully me into putting on a mask, despite my distance from them and legally valid mask exemption. It sucks.
Your privilege is showing.
Yes, I am using my privilege as an able-bodied healthy white person, licensed therapist, educated to master’s level, and a successful business owner to take a stand for what I believe. I’m also using my wisdom as a formerly depressed, addicted, suicidal (2001) person who has fully recovered without the use of long-term pharmaceuticals…by building loving community. I am standing up not an another’s expense, but in fact to my own risk…for the purpose of my own growth, healing, and reverence for truth, community mental health, and life. I am acting from my conscience in service to myself and the community I love, and it’s an anti-depressant for me after a tremendously depressing year. Because for me and others (about 200 Washingtonians participated, but we are connected with many more across the world), who do not believe the covid risk is as high as what we’ve been told by people selling us its cure, community is our medicine.
Yesterday, I worked security at an “anti-mask” aka “pro-face” freedom rally and march at the Seattle Center. It was a profoundly moving and healing experience for me.
Here’s what the rally/march was like…pictures tell the story far better than words.
The feeling at this rally was light-hearted, supportive, and infused with palpable excitement. Home-made food was shared. Uplifting music played from a professional sound system, and people danced and sang along. The talks emphasized the growing wait list at Children’s Medical Center for psychiatric care, and the oppression of mask mandates that need to end.
The ten of us on security team found no trolls nor disrupters to worry about. As cars drove by, the response was polarized but undeniably more positive than negative. Either people would honk, smile, roll down their windows and wave, or they would flip us off.
The Seattle police sent four officers to “keep the peace,” but we didn’t need their help — we were peaceful and thankfully, no one significantly disrupted us. Several masked pedestrians passed us with masks, and we did our best to give them space. They were not heckled, but a few approached to comment — some were verbally critical, some apathetic, and some curious or even in agreement: they lingered to chat about how they felt scared of vaccines, and were not trusting the Inslee-Biden-Fauci covid narrative.
I spoke with an elder Russian immigrant who came to the rally because she was alarmed by parallels between Russian communist policies and American covid controls.
“If I don’t come out here,” she said, “I will go crazy.”
What kind of people planned and supported this march? Many have been meeting in large gatherings since spring of 2020! And per their report, there were no “superspreader” outcomes, in fact no spread of illnesses at all. If people had cold/flu symptoms, they simply stayed home.
I will close with a prayer by a member of the “freedom” community, offered the morning of the march:
May we all open our hearts to those who are in fear. May we recognize that many of our brothers and sisters have been deceived about their risk of dying from a virus. May we see the love they are showing in wearing masks. May we see that when they attack those without masks, they think they are heroes protecting their fellow man. May we send them love and light.
May we not be consumed by our own fear of having our “freedom” and “choice” trampled. Please open our hearts so that we can reach out and educate them. May we help them see that our actions arise from the same love for our fellow man.
Since the government does not have the power or authority to enforce these mandates, these brothers and sisters living in fear are being used to do the bidding of the corrupt agents who fooled them. By reaching out with a message of love and compassion, we can restore them to true love and joyful life.
I pray that we all take the opportunity to show those who are still in the dark that we are all on the same side: the side of love. May we take them a message that assuages their fear and allows them to see that our position is based upon accurate knowledge of science, health, and love.
May we all be reunified in the understanding that we are all working to save lives and perfect our love for one another. May we stop making enemies where there are really only loving people trying to help one another.
When we put ourselves in their shoes, we can better understand that those enforcing this mandate are our own brothers and sisters who also come from a place of love. When we unify with them in finding solutions that serve us all, then this ugly division will end. Those who mask and those who do not mask will once again recognize that we are part of one loving human family. The terror we inflict upon one another will end. No longer will anyone else shake in fear at the prospect of being attacked for trying to buy vegetables. No longer will the needs of children be subjugated to the terror of adults who have been blinded to their suffering. We will all be joined again as a family in love and understanding, showing tolerance and knowledge of one another and finding solutions that serve to benefit the entire world.
May our message today focus less on our perspectives of “choice” and “freedom” and more on reunification with those who have been deceived. May we be conduits of a message of love so that the hearts of those who are in fear can be made sounds and they will be able to hear the truth and understand that we are all here to help one another.
I wish you all safety and joy. May you be guided to find the right words and actions to reunite us with the rest of our brothers and sisters.
Amen.
More on asymptomatic spread research:
Asymptomatic transmission is very rare, to wit:
► Asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 | Allyson M Pollock, professor of public health, James Lancaster, independent researcher | BMJ [British Medical Journal] 2020; 371 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4851 (Published 21 December 2020) | Cite this as: BMJ 2020;371:m4851: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851.
• “Earlier estimates that 80% of infections are asymptomatic were too high and have since been revised down to between 17% and 20% of people with infections.”
• “It’s also unclear to what extent people with no symptoms transmit SARS-CoV-2. The only test for live virus is viral culture. PCR and lateral flow tests do not distinguish live virus. No test of infection or infectiousness is currently available for routine use.[6][7][8] As things stand, a person who tests positive with any kind of test may or may not have an active infection with live virus, and may or may not be infectious.[9] The relations between viral load, viral shedding, infection, infectiousness, and duration of infectiousness are not well understood. In a recent systematic review, no study was able to culture live virus from symptomatic participants after the ninth day of illness, despite persistently high viral loads in quantitative PCR diagnostic tests. However, cycle threshold (Ct) values from PCR tests are not direct measures of viral load and are subject to error.[10]”
“The transmission rates to contacts within a specific group (secondary attack rate) may be 3–25 times lower for people who are asymptomatic than for those with symptoms.[1] [12] [14] [15] A city-wide prevalence study of almost 10 million people in Wuhan found no evidence of asymptomatic transmission.[16]” “Searching for people who are asymptomatic yet infectious is like searching for needles that appear and reappear transiently in haystacks, particularly when rates are falling.[19] Mass testing risks the harmful diversion of scarce resources.
Staci Sprout, LICSW, CSAT is a is a licensed psychotherapist from Seattle with over twenty-six years of experience as a therapist and social worker in a variety of settings from community mental health and hospitals to private clinical practice. Since 2006, she has dedicated her practice to helping individuals, groups and couples in recovery from sex/pornography, love and relationship addictions. She wrote a book about her own recovery titled Naked in Public: A Memoir of Recovery from Sex Addiction and Other Temporary Insanities.
More information available at www.stacisprout.com. Online professional education program “Shadows of the Heart: Best Practices of Helping Professionals Treating Women with Love, Sex and Relationship Addiction” at https://stacisprout.thinkific.com/. Staci’s latest venture has been to launch “Women’s Intimacy Skills Bootcamp” classes for women who want a gentle crash course in intimacy with self and others.
