The Branch Covidians are Getting Restless
Now that there is funny, no matter who you are, Branch Covidians. That was coined after the “protest” at the State Capitol on Wednesday that largely fizzled out unless you believe the reports of those organizing and promoting the event.
One TV station ran a helicopter camera shot that showed right at 100 vehicles. Another TV station's headline was “Dozens of Protesters.....”, while activists on site claimed hundreds of vehicles yet they provided no count of vehicles or pictures that had more than a dozen or so cars . Under any criteria, it was a complete flop.
Why did the event fail? Several reasons, first they had no target to protest against. People just upset that they were under quarantine without any solutions or even anyone to blame. Without an alternative past what Governor Stitt had already laid out, exactly why were they protesting? One would have understood if they went after the handful of out of control counties or small cities that were risking lawsuits losses over their too restrictive regulations. Or if they would have picketed the Unemployment Office for getting the checks out so late. Instead, they drove around the Capitol apparently protesting the Governor's handling of the pandemic.
There would have been thousands there had they gone after the Unemployment Office, someone to blame, something hadn't been done right and it was obvious. But instead about as many showed up as have died in Oklahoma since the beginning, if one is insignificant in number then so is the other. Consider that one in 18,000 showed up and supported the protest when tens of thousands are bored sitting at home, the vast majority of the public isn't angry at anyone, they do want to get back to normal, but are intelligent enough to let things run their course.
The organizers of course are livid that their viewpoint isn't being taken seriously. Exactly who all is behind the “protest” isn't all known but Ronda Vuillemont Smith from Tulsa 9-12 Group was exposed as one of the organizers yet she used another woman as the spokesperson, some say she was running the show but was reluctant to head the effort after being blistered a few weeks back by many of her own supporters as being “anti Trump”. We wrote about that story back on March 22nd after Ronda had attended a Broken Arrow city meeting advocating the city not follow Governor Stitt's recommendations to close the restaurants and large public gatherings. If that wasn't bad enough, she also posted about their group's efforts on Facebook.
After the response was overwhelmingly blistering Ronda deleted the comments and the post itself but not before people had taken screen shots and shared them widely. Many were outraged at the censorship of the comments, saying that the group was attacking free speech and unable to defend their views and actions.
Whatever the reasons we felt it was important that everyone know that the “group” that hosted the “protest” on Wednesday was pretty much astro turf, and that for whatever reasons Tulsa 9-12 hid their organizing behind the event. No doubt the debacle from the month before was fresh in their minds or perhaps they thought it would get more press coverage. The sad thing is that the event was well publicized by major newspapers, TV stations, and radio prior to the event. The problem was the vast majority of the public said “I don't think so...”.
What was very interesting though was her actions later that week a post by Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum was getting hundreds of positive comments in support of Bynum furloughing hundreds of Tulsa City employees due to the funding failures caused by the drop in tax revenue. Ronda posted the comment below:
The problem was that all you had to do was read through the hundreds of posts to find plenty of negative comments about Bynum along with one or two posts also claiming the negative posts were being deleted. The deletion of Facebook posts by public officials has been ruled as illegal yet Ronda furnished zero proof of any post deletions nor does there appear to be any shortage of negative posts scattered throughout the approximately 750 post comments.
What might have happened is that Ronda didn't find her comments because Facebook automatically shows only some comments:
"Most relevant is selected, so some replies may have been filtered out"
By comparison less than a month before Ronda deleted hundreds of criticizing comments when she defied Trump's recommendations to stay home and close non essential businesses to slow the spread of the virus.
Tulsa 9-12's leader wasn't the only activist to step out in front of what they thought was a grand issue to further their agenda only to find it was a firing squad. One poor soul posted his views on defiance of the quarantine and the facts surrounding the virus and was met with his own adult daughter posting reminding him that his live in girlfriend was a nurse and that she was terrified of catching the virus while dealing with patients and wouldn't be happy to see her boy friend calling her stupid for being concerned. That brought a few chuckles to the conversation.
