This is Part 3 of my journey to master activism. If you’re just tuning in, you can catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 on my blog!
Right after our 2019 victories for life—with the abortion amendment to the state constitution withdrawn and the physician-assisted suicide bill defeated—our county and state organizations felt the momentum building. In the “off-season,” we continued building coalitions and raising awareness. We hosted another conference in Fall 2019, open to the entire state, in preparation for the legislative season. When the abortion amendment was reintroduced, our legislative director for MDRTL was already holding weekly strategy calls. We were on fire!
Whispers of the novel coronavirus began in early winter. I heard about it on the morning news (when I still watched the morning news) and thought how silly it was. Videos were going viral on Facebook and Instagram, and I dismissed the hype as cheesy. Working for a church, I rolled my eyes any time someone asked if we would consider streaming Mass “if the virus gets closer.”
In February 2020, our pro-life coalition met in the capital for a lobby day I can only describe as powerful. Over 100 citizens from around the state showed up to lobby their representatives against the abortion amendment and physician-assisted suicide, and in favor of a few common-sense pro-life bills. When we returned one month later for the senate hearing on a “privacy amendment” that we correctly identified as this year’s iteration of the abortion amendment, we were a force to be reckoned with. Over 75 witnesses arrived dressed in blue to rally for life. Thirty minutes before the hearing was to begin, the bill was withdrawn by the sponsor! Celebrating in the hallways of the senate building, bumping elbows rather than shaking hands and laughing about “what coronavirus?” we felt unstoppable.
Our work wasn’t done though. Physician-assisted suicide was still due for a hearing. My husband and I headed home after a long day in Annapolis, with our sights set on the next bill to kill, unaware of what was about to hit. Literally the very next day, Governor Larry Hogan, along with almost every governor in the country, went live from a press conference with the exact same “flatten the curve” graphic, announcing a 2-week school closure and a gathering restriction of no more than 250 people. Our children’s recreational indoor soccer tournament was canceled. Many other gatherings were voluntarily postponed. All Catholic Masses were closed to the public. Restaurants were ghost towns that weekend (we took our kids out for their birthdays and had entire dining rooms to ourselves). There was probably a 12-hour period when I thought the panic was warranted. By the following Monday, Larry Hogan gave his “you didn’t listen, and now I have to punish you” speech, announcing further gathering restrictions and closures. It didn’t take a conspiracy theorist to speculate something coordinated was happening; it was so brazenly apparent.
Thus began the more than two-month lockdown of our state. Within 2 weeks of the initial closures, Larry Hogan announced a stay-at-home order. The suffering began immediately. I remember going to the grocery store around the corner from my house looking for one ingredient, and a woman with a toddler on her hip, clearly haggard from a long day at work, passed me in the parking lot saying, “There ain’t no food in there.” My husband, a public school teacher, was thrust into a Zoom school schedule after the first two weeks, which was nothing short of a disaster. My children, who are homeschooled, were beside themselves with the loss of activities. But the worst was my own feeling of helplessness and obsession with finding SOME way to make this end. From morning until night, I consumed articles, videos, and social media posts, learning about COVID-19 to separate fact from fiction. As an activist, I kept thinking if I just had the right talking points or influenced the right people, we could end the lockdowns and go back to normal. Unfortunately, all my complaining on Facebook wasn’t getting me anywhere.
That is until late April 2020, when ordinary citizens all over the country started organizing protests in their states. I called up my lobbyist friend, who is a silent partner in some of my grassroots shenanigans much of the time, and said to her, “ReopenMaryland.com is available for sale.” By the end of the day, we had a GoDaddy one-page website with an email campaign sending letters to the Governor. (There was a group that started operating shortly after that under the banner of Reopen Maryland, led by a man who became my good friend, Tim Walters, but I never did tell him why his website had to be reopen-maryland.com) The Reopen Maryland Group organized a few in-person protests which my family attended before Larry Hogan announced “Stage 1 of Phase 1” to reopen the state of Maryland on May 13, 2020. This is when the trajectory of my life literally changed forever.
When Lockdown Larry announced his reopening plan for Maryland, he left a clause in his emergency declarations for over a year that gave local jurisdictions the power to go “more restrictive” than his state-level orders were. County executives and commissioner boards began announcing their intentions to either open with the state that coming Friday or remain closed for a period of time. The bluest regions of the state like Prince George’s and Baltimore City immediately declined to reopen. However, we expected Charles County to be in great shape to reopen! Our numbers were low, and literally 90% of our cases and deaths were in one nursing home. The Board of Commissioners met for over 2 hours, listening to the expert testimony of the CEO of the hospital, the Sheriff, the EMS and Fire Departments, and an administrator for the Maryland State Department of Health, all saying the same thing: we were ready. And yet when the vote was cast, the decision from our Board of Commissioners was 3-2 to remain CLOSED for two more weeks. The rest of the state was allowed to leave their homes, but I was going to be living under a stay-at-home order for 2 more weeks?!
I went apoplectic. My husband, children, and I were at my empty office watching the meeting and attempting to get work done. On the 10-minute drive home, I created a closed Facebook group “Reopen Charles County” on my phone and began inviting people. It went viral. I had 1000 members by the next morning. Before midnight, I’d purchased the domain name, built a website, and had my first petition going. Someone else called a rally for the next day, which I showed up to and promoted the group again. Our goal: pressure the Board to call another emergency meeting and relent.
To find out how we did, come back tomorrow for part 4!