Oregon Town Declares Emergency to Fight Gov. Brown's Lockdowns
- kerryinbox
- Apr 28, 2021
- 4 min read
In the small-ish burg of Baker City, way out in Eastern Oregon, far away from the capital city, a proposal among business leaders has ignited a movement. Now, the mayor says other towns across Oregon are looking to her city as a model to fight back against an out-of-control governor.
In an interview with PJ Media, Baker City Mayor Kerry McQuisten says the proposal began as an attempt to make their town a Common Sense Sanctuary. Serving in her first term, business leaders approached her the day after her swearing-in took place in January. “It was quite a process,” she says. “After we were all sworn in back on January 12th, local businesses brought forth to [city] council an idea of a Common Sense Sanctuary City. The idea was pretty funny, actually. It was a good idea. They were asking for local businesses to be able to adhere, or not adhere to the mask mandates, the OSHA [Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division] restrictions, as they saw fit individually.”
McQuisten says the city council conducted a town hall meeting over the issue. “Business owners poured in to give testimony. Some questioned whether the city could protect them from state OSHA regulations and targeting by these agencies.”
The town hall led to a workgroup to study the idea further. McQuisten says they chose a deliberate course of action that included a letter from the city to Governor Kate Brown telling her that business leaders and the Baker City community had been left out of the pandemic decision-making process. After that, they decided a resolution wasn’t strong enough to convey their message.
“After we got no response from the governor,” McQuisten says, “we brought forth the Emergency Declaration, and batted the language back and forth for a couple of weeks.”
What resulted from this work in March was an official declaration by Baker City: “RESOLUTION DECLARING AN ECONOMIC, MENTAL HEALTH, AND CRIMINAL ACTIVITY CRISIS DUE TO THE CURRENT COVID-RELATED STATE EMERGENCY DECLARATION AND RELATING OSHA MANDATES AND GUIDANCE.” The resolution passed a city council by a vote of 5-2 on March 23.
McQuisten said that at the time, being a year and two weeks into “two weeks to flatten the curve” was the motivating factor for the city council vote to protect their small businesses. “Our businesses in Oregon have completely suffered,” she told PJ Media. “There are lots of businesses that are just gone and cannot survive, nor should they be asked to. It’s a moral failing of the state to ask them to sacrifice so much when they have just as much right to survive as any Big Box store.”
The Criminal Element Is Very Thankful for Oregon’s Lockdowns
The declaration cites many examples of increased criminal behavior, negative mental health outcomes, and business failures. “This resolution is saying that these mandates are hurting us more than the virus at this point,” McQuisten says. “They’re hurting us on a mental health level, on an economic level, and in terms of criminal activity. Our jail is in such a diminished capacity situation right now. We have 45 beds we normally can fill. Right now, it’s down to 15, 20 beds. So, when someone is arrested, unless it’s a severely violent crime, they are cited and released and turned back out onto the streets. I actually heard someone who had been arrested walking down the street laughing that this was the perfect time because these are mandates to commit crimes.”
“The criminal element here is very thankful to Salem at this point because they’re thriving here,” she said.
Oregon’s Governor Doesn’t Care About Lockdown Concerns
McQuisten says the governor, Oregon Health Authority, OSHA, and other agencies in charge of enforcing lockdowns have completely ignored the concerns of citizens and business owners. They even reject peer-reviewed studies and CDC guidelines.
“So there was a study that came out of Stanford University, a peer-reviewed study that was reported in Newsweek,” she says. “I was on a mayor’s call with the governor and some of the staff. I brought up that study and they summarily brushed it aside. They said, ‘That’s an outlier. It’s an outlier.’ It’s a Stanford University, peer-reviewed study and they won’t consider it. And then I pointed them to the CDC website where it says lockdowns should not be used as a primary method of controlling this disease and stopping the spread. That was the only question that they skipped over.”
McQuisten says she hopes Baker City can serve as an example for other cities and counties across Oregon, encouraging them to fight back against arbitrary pandemic mitigation measures that have proven destructive.
“The first thing we were trying to accomplish is just to say what the people in our community have wanted to say publicly for the last year,” she says. “We’re bringing a voice to them. So it’s needed to happen for a year. I think that’s the first step is just making that statement and giving our folks a voice. The second thing we’re hoping is that we can get enough coverage with the media, with other mayors, other county commissioners, possibly different areas in the state will pick this up and enact something similar of their own.”
McQuisten tells PJ Media that since the resolution passed last month, she’s heard from a number of elected officials across Oregon. “The League of Oregon cities is spotlighting us in their podcast,” she says, “and several other mayors across the state are looking at the resolution.”
