The San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Scott Thomson, vice mayor of the city of Oroville in northern California, which last month declared itself a constitutional republic in relation to wishing not to enforce the state's vaccine mandates. You can read more about the matter here and here. I'm covering this interview with Thomson because he provides more information than I've seen elsewhere about what he--the architect of the resolution--and others in Oroville were thinking when they passed it, including regarding the question: why a "constitutional republic"? I also think his description of rural difference is noteworthy and gives us insights into a "rural" mindset (though Oroville is a city of 20,000).
Here's a quote from Thomson on the former:
The founding document of this country protects the rights of its citizens against the government and says there are certain self-evident, unalienable rights that are not given by the government and should be protected. The second word "republic" was chosen because it is what America is. We didn’t declare ourselves a new country, or a community, or the Communist Party of China or something. We declared ourselves what we already are.
We are not a pure democracy but a republic, which gives a voice to minority because otherwise you have majority rule. In a pure democracy, if 51% of people want to take away your house they can take away your house, but in a constitutional republic, you have rights that no one can take away.
Other news reports have made it sound like we're trying to separate from California or the United States, which is not true, or that it's about seeking protection from all COVID mandates. The way Vice has written about us has been immature and they look like fools.
And here's a quote from the vice mayor on the latter, which elaborates on rural difference and why that difference from the implicit urban norm justifies local control:
But given that there's a threat [from COVID-19] , the question is, "How should that threat be handled?" I think that it's not a one-size-fits-all approach like our governor and president believe. Assemblyman James Gallagher has long been asking Sacramento for local control in how we protect citizens here, which has fallen on deaf ears.
Some mandates and policies may work better in San Francisco or Los Angeles, where you have millions of people stacked on top of each other versus a rural area that's very spread out. And in a rural community like ours, where people have been around for decades, everyone knows each other. I've lived in the Bay Area before and know that when you go into a grocery store, there's a high chance you won’t see anyone you know. Here, it's sometime hard to leave the store without stopping and talking to everyone because we have such a tight-knit community.
When someone is sick, most of the town knows because we’re all friends. We've taken the pandemic seriously and rallied around each other. I can see why in places with less connectivity, it may make more sense for the government to get involved.
My main point is just because there's a policy in a large metropolitan area, it's not always the best decision to bring it to a community like ours. Or, at least let us have a dialogue with Newsom and the state's health officials because so far it's been one-way communication and we feel like we don't have a voice in some of these decisions.
We have no plans to secede from the state, we love California, but the sense and feel is that it's Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Francisco calling the shots while rural communities like ours have no say. If Gavin had listened to Gallagher, and said, "Let's bring them in and have a dialogue," maybe we'd come away saying, "We may not like this, but we're all in this together." But right now it feels like they're saying, "We're mandating it and you're following suit. Shut up if you have questions, you idiots."
I'd love to see a State of California executive/gubernatorial response to this complaint about one-way communication.
Postscript. For the sake of contrast, here's a report out of Missouri on December 10, about an executive branch official going in the other direction on COVID: the state attorney general, who is running for senate, has ordered Missouri counties to abandon all public health measures in relation to the pandemic.
He wrote local public health agencies Tuesday threatening legal action if they do not drop mask mandates, quarantine rules or other public health orders. His letter followed a court ruling last month that stripped health departments of several legal powers to order disease-control measures.
The story features one nonmetro southwest Missouri county, Laclede, with a 35% vaccination rate, which is doing just that.
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