277

"We are the daughters of the witches you weren't able to burn" -- my new personal slogan.

This morning, O and I met up with a group of moms from the Fremont HMN to do a legislative visit at Senator Weickowski's office here in San Leandro.

O woke up late and I had to rush like crazy to get us out the door on time.  We met with the district director for about 30 minutes to tell him why we would like the senator to oppose SB277, which is the bill that would make vaccinations mandatory for every kid over age 5 in California.  District director was super defensive and arrogant and looked at us like we were all crazy.  Our main spokesperson was about 7 months pregnant and I could almost feel her blood pressure rising as we tried to reason with the guy.  I liked being able to point out that the senator, who co-authored the bill, didn't seem to be aware that the law would leave families with quite literally no other option than to fully vaccinate.  The way it was written, every kid - regardless of whether they were in public, private, or home school - would have to receive all 69 doses of the current vaccine schedule PLUS any other vaccines deemed necessary by the CDC.  The only people who would be able to opt out are those who have cancer and could request a medical waiver.  Having experienced a documented seizure as a side effect from a previous vaccine or having another documented vaccine reaction or injury would not qualify someone for a medical waiver, even if their pediatrician requested it.

At one point he said, "well, you could just not go to school." So I responded with, "actually, you can't because you would be considered truant and CPS would be called."  His response? "Oh."

We schooled him on a few other points about the bill and by the end of the meeting, he was talking about, "well, you know, the language in bills can be revised throughout the process..."

Uh-huh.

I was pretty proud of us as a group.  Each mom was either pregnant or had a toddler with her.  One kid cried in the middle of the meeting and O spilled her apple chips all over the floor, but otherwise we all did pretty well.  We handed over a stack of personal letters from those who could not be at the meeting today, as well as a bound set of 200 pages of info about why we oppose the bill.  He didn't know what to say.

When it was all over and we got outside, we had to take a few minutes to just breathe and try to calm down.  I passed around some rescue remedy lozenges and we did some deep breathing.  The mixture of anger, fear, and adrenaline was so powerful we all felt sick.  The pregnant woman started having braxton-hicks contractions.  I felt like I was going to vomit.

It took more than an hour for my stomach to settle down.  By then, O and I were doing tie-dye at Kiddie Kollege and pretending to just be a normal family. 

Next up is planning a visit with our local assemblymember.  We will not be bullied.  No on SB277!