Photo via @SamBraslow/Twitter
October 7, 2021, 10:20 am
A horrifying video out of Beverly Hills shows a crowd of anti-vaxxers walking after and shouting at parents walking their young kids to elementary school, accusing them of child abuse for having them wear masks and worse, including a woman who referred to vaccinations as “rape.” The protest was organized by local anti-vaxx group Beverly Hills Freedom Rally around National Walk to School Day, which was being celebrated by Hawthorne Elementary School.
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Multiple videos have already emerged out of this mob harassment, mostly centered on Beverly Hills Mayor Robert Wunderlich, who was walking his own kids to school. While confronting politicians in public has become an increasingly common tactic among activists all over the political spectrum, many feel that doing so specifically around a lot of very young kids while screaming about child abuse and rape is taking it too far.
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The footage, captured by local reporter Samuel Braslow, shows a woman shouting back at “Freedom Rally” founder and notorious anti-vaxxer Shiva Bagheri as she tells the mother that her child is going to be traumatized from wearing a mask.
“You’re traumatizing your child,” says Bagheri.
“That’s my choice,” the mom hits back, evoking common anti-vaxxer rhetoric about the parental right to choose what’s best for one’s child. “You’d better respect my choice!”
“No,” Bagheri says. “You have propaganda. You’re not being told the truth. You’re scaring your kid by yelling.”
She says that last part as the mother picks up her small child to carry him away from the crowd, which caused the yelling in the first place. But it gets worse. As the protesters approach the elementary school, a man can be heard yelling “masking children is child abuse.”
“You mask your child, you’re a child abuser,” he shouts, echoing the baffling false claims put forth by Tucker Carlson.
Once in front of the school, with little kids running around everywhere, Bagheri starts getting downright vulgar and offensive.
“You should choose what goes on your child’s face and in your child’s body,” she says, ignoring the fact that that is exactly what these parents are doing. “This is rape. They’re trying to rape our children with this poison. They’re going to rape their lives away.”
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Police can be seen everywhere around the scene as little kids arrive, having to walk past a group of adults yelling that they’re being raped and abused.
This latest anti-vaxxer protest may have managed to top the ones outside of the cancer clinics in awfulness (not necessarily surprising since Bagheri is the woman who punched a cancer survivor at just such a protest), earning groups like Freedom Rally comparisons to the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.
A speaker at the protester admitted outright that the purpose of the protest was to cause fear.
“They think it’s gonna be a fun and safe photo opportunity with parents and kids,” said local attorney David Hakimfar. “Let’s show up here and show them it’s not. Let’s show them how we really feel. Let’s make them afraid.”
*First Published: October 7, 2021, 10:20 am
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