Get off your soapbox! 

As if I couldn't get the liberal freedom takers any more pissed off at New Times, I thought I would just go ahead and try again this week.

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We're going to talk about a group of anti-vaxxers on the Central Coast—wait, they want to be called ex-vaxxers ... wait, actually, they're now calling themselves the Central Coast Health Coalition, which is kind of like the oil industry lobby calling itself Californians for Energy Independence.

This coalition is so healthy, in fact, that Facebook put a disclaimer on the group's page warning everyone who visits that the group discusses vaccines.

"Before joining this group, read information from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that can help answer questions you may have about vaccines," the disclaimer states.

You know your cause is in trouble when Facebook weighs in.

But, guys, if you ask coalition members, the CDC is in on the vaccine hoax with the pharmaceutical companies and so is Facebook. In fact, everyone is in on the conspiracy—but coalition members. Only they know the truth. Don't be sheeple people!

After a vaccine grudge match transpired on New Times' Facebook page over a My805Tix post for a showing of Vaxxed II: The People's Truth (it's kind of hard to read that without rolling my eyes and heaving a gigantic sigh), I was hoping that I wouldn't have to touch the whole vaccine thing for the foreseeable future, but then the Women's March SLO had to go ahead and mess up that dream! How could you? Damnit!

Now I have to—once again—stand up for the rights of people I know are wrong to speak their minds. God, I hate it when I have to do that. But. Here. I. Go.

You leave me no choice!

Our friendly neighborhood group of mothers against vaccinating their children because they apparently don't believe in science when it comes to measles, polio, chicken pox, etc.—aka the "health" coalition, which doesn't care about herd health or understand the concept of immunity—applied to have a booth in Mitchell Park during the Women's March event on Jan. 18. Women's March SLO (WMSLO) denied the application, saying that the mission of the coalition doesn't align with that of the march, according to Andrea Chmelik, a spokesperson for the local chapter of the Women's March.

"Part of the mission of WMSLO is to work in solidarity to protect women's rights, human rights, our safety, our health, and our planet. While WMSLO recognizes that many issues exist with the pharmaceutical industry, the movement to suppress the rate of vaccine use poses dangers to health and safety, and therefore does not align with WMSLO's focus," Chmelik said.

It's mothers against mothers here in SLO, sheeple!

Fair. Women's March SLO paid for the permit to use the park and has every right to control who sets up booths during the event.

What really got my gears grinding is this next part. Women who showed up to participate in the march were asked to wait across the street because the signs they held didn't have slogans on them that Women's March SLO organizers wanted associated with the march. So much so that organizers got San Luis Obispo Police Department officers to ask "health" coalition members to leave the park!

Whatever happened to the invitation for people to "address your truth" on the signs they carried?

"This rally and march is free and open to the public. Your signs are your personal expression of values you are fighting for," according to the Women's March SLO website.

There's nothing that says, if your truth doesn't align with ours, you have to go across the street and hang out in the church parking lot because the rally isn't actually open to "the" public; it's only open to "our" public.

It's disappointing and a common complaint that's been lobbied against the march from the beginning. If you don't fit in, then get out!

And come on Women's March SLO organizers! You didn't think that the anti-vaxxers (Yes, that's what you coalition people are!) were going to make a gigantic stink about having their speech rights squelched? They already have a freakin' complex about being discriminated against.

Meanwhile, frequent and outspoken vaxx-tavist (It's like fracktavist, get it?) Nicole Dorfman compared the coalition's plight and Women's March concerns about public health to the "rationale used to segregate and oppress African Americans during the Jim Crow era; it was one of the things that Nazis leveled against Jews, that they were rats and they spread disease."

Really, Nicole? Wow.

She continued by calling out these supposed "herd immunity" claims.

"I don't think they have a shred of evidence ... that unvaccinated people are more likely to spread disease in general," Nicole said.

Really? What about that whole polio thing? According to the CDC, polio has been eradicated in the U.S. for the last three decades. And yes, that is because of vaccines!

But if Nicole wants to say all of that—and she obviously did—she has every right to. No matter how wrong it might be.

And if the Women's March is going to get on a soapbox about being inclusive, then it should be inclusive, even if it means cringing at the sight of the signs that people are carrying. Δ

The Shredder is always on a soapbox. Send comments to [email protected].