Governor Ducey’s extension of the Stay at Home Declaration until May 15 is not meant to hurt people or damage them financially.
It is meant to protect them as much as possible from exposure to the Coronavirus, which has not peaked yet in Arizona. It is meant to save lives. It is meant to help pave the way for a smoother, more sustainable reopening of the economy and state.
Unfortunately, as some other articles have already reported, fringe elements in Arizona, and other states, have decided that the Stay at Home declarations proclaimed by Governor Ducey and other state leaders go against their constitutional liberties.
These individuals have been encouraged to defy, beyond protesting, the Stay at Home Proclamation in part by members of the State House Liberty Faction in the Arizona Legislature, the Sheriffs of Pinal, and Mohave County’s, small business owners, and local civic and social media leaders.
As Elvira Diaz wrote in the title of her May 1 column on the subject: “What part of ‘illegal’ do lockdown protesters in Arizona not understand?”
Also, what part of risking lives do they not understand?
When lawmakers like LD 16 State House Representative and Liberty Faction fringe member Kelly Townsend and Apache Junction Mayor Jeff Serdy encouraging the whims of individuals who hold up signs that read, “If we must die, we die defending our freedom,” they are risking lives and potentially encouraging the illegal defiance of proclamations promoting public safety.
When elected law enforcement officials like Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb and Mohave County Sheriff Douglas Shuster choose what laws (which they are not allowed to do) to enforce by ignoring the Stay at Home Proclamation, they are risking lives and are in illegal defiance of proclamations promoting public safety.
When restaurant owners, like those at the Horseshoe Cafe in Wickenburg, open their locations to sit down services with virtually no social distance safeguards, they are risking lives and are in illegal defiance of proclamations promoting public safety.
When social media groups hold large public events at parks or other locations with little to no social distance precautions, they are risking lives and encouraging the illegal defiance of proclamations promoting public safety.
When local political leaders and activists like those in Legislative District 11 deny the science of the Coronavirus and say that the stay at home proclamations in Arizona and across the nation have made the country a “police state,” their ignorance and bombastic statements are risking lives and potentially encouraging the illegal defiance of proclamations promoting public safety.
All citizens, especially law enforcement officials and public servants, cannot choose what laws to follow and which ones not to.
They can protest as is their constitutional right but they have to follow the proclamation with appropriate social distance protections.
If they do not, that would make them no better than, as Diaz points out, the individuals that cross the border illegally.
The people defying these proclamations are not patriotic freedom fighters fighting for liberty.
They are not resistance fighters opposing a version of the Nuremberg Laws against the Jews.
These are law and order hypocrites that live in the Trump Zone and watch both Fox Island and Disinfowars. Their defying the Stay at Home proclamation is illegal and unsafe. Some of them, especially those carrying arms and/or holding Nazi and confederate flags in other states are frankly domestic terrorists.
They need to think of the greater good and the safety of the community, not their own self-interests.