On September 26, national anti-vaccine crusader Del BigTree will speak at "The Big One" rally at Minnesota State Capitol to stop vaccine mandate and passports
The rally is being promoted on the Stop the Mandate MN calendar; the image is branded with the group's URL StoptheMandateMN.org. Stop The Mandate MN describes itself as a grassroots organization. It appears to be affiliated with an effort to fund a lawsuit that would be filed in Minnesota's federal court by Gregory Erickson of Minneapolis law firm Mohrman, Kaardal and Erickson. A FAQ document about the lawsuit is viewable here.
Mark Bishofsky, a respiratory therapist at Stillwater's Lakeview Memorial Hospital who blogs at the Stop The Mandate MN website, appeared on the Stew Peters show with Erickson in August to talk about the efforts to ban vaccine mandates.
BigTree will in the Loon State that weekend for the Saturday, September 25 Global Health Freedom Summit in Alexandria, Minnesota, where he'll share the stage with other leading figures in the anti-vax movement, as well as Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen. Jensen began establishing his anti-vaxx ties while serving in the state senate. though Salon reported in July that he denies he's an anti-vaxxer — he's just anti-vax-curious.
Who are these people? Bishofsky tells about his thinking in an August 22 post on the website, Why I did this...:
. . . I tried advocate for my patients by suggesting the doctors try vitamin D, HCQ and Ivermectin. I even mentioned quercetin and zinc. They refused, and since then, they treat me like I am just a crazy conspiracy theorist. Imagine being on your death bed, on 100% oxygen and barely maintaining life. Now imagine asking the doctor if they could just please give you some Ivermectin and that your are not concerned about any risks or side effects. If you imagined that they’d give it a try, you are wrong. They say no and walk out of the room. The patient-doctor relationship is dead. The decision making for treatment comes from a bureaucratic agenda, not a critically thinking doctor at the bedside. It sickens me.
I held many dying hands. I tried to give my patients some sense of peace in their last moments. I spent dozens of hours at the bedside, risking my life with inadequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and no vaccine, so that human beings would not have to die alone. It was heartbreaking. There are no words. I shed way too may tears and lost countless hours of sleep. I remember every single one of my patients and I tear up now thinking of them. Their deaths were tragedies that did not need to occur.
Since my employer’s mandate was released a couple weeks ago, it has been a whirlwind of emotions…fear, anxiety, anger, exasperation and exhaustion. I wondered what I could sell my house for. I wondered what would happen to my beautiful children. I crawled into a desperate hole and waited for the public…the men and women of this great country to stand the hell up and fight for what’s right. Nobody was doing it. I approached my administrators, who actually do not believe in the mandate, and asked them why they would not stand up. I asked them when their morals would trump their paycheck and all I get is political spin. I decided ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
On August 10th, I was at work, in distress and all of a sudden it hit me. Enough trying to convince the sheep! I decided I was going find every single freedom loving patriot and I was going to make some change. I gave my phone number to one person and asked that they give it out to those in the same position, and text “vaccine” to the number. Within 20 minutes, my phone was rattling. I gave it to a few more people and it spread like wildfire. Then, I made a sign and some flyers and picketed outside of a hospital. I got more and more texts…hundreds. The momentum was incredible. I didn’t even know where exactly it was going, but I knew I was sick and tired of bitching and wondering. It was time to take charge. I held a rally with 600 people and was able to connect with gubernatorial candidates and other high profile individuals. I even got to talk to Stew Peters. It has been a hell of a ride and I AM ONLY GETTING STARTED.
I had this website created to bring like-minded people together. There are, no doubt, plenty of us patriots who know the scam and my intention is to find every single one of them in Minnesota. We cannot win this with a couple hundred people standing outside a hospital. We need thousands, and not just hospital workers. This is so much bigger than just one job and one jab. This is about freedom…freedom to work…freedom of mobility…freedom to eat at restaurants and much more. More importantly, this is about our children and their future freedoms. So YES, I intend to find every single Minnesotan to unite and arrive as ONE! We must gather, organize and demand that this ends, or ‘it’ is over. Freedom will be dead.
Please stand with me. Please be proud of your ability to question authority and see through the bullcrap. Please help me stop this. I am just one person and if I can accomplish this much in 10 days, I cannot even imagine what we could do if we all got angry and energized. Please join the fight! . . .
You've got to fight for your right to horse dewormer.
On the other end of celebrity, Del BigTree showed up at Alexandria MN's yearly anti-vax conference in 2019, according to a report in the Echo Press. The paper noted:
Bigtree created "Vaxxed" with Andrew Wakefield, a British doctor who led a now-discredited study that vaccines cause autism. "Vaxxed," according to its website, is about an alleged coverup of a vaccine/autism link by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was pulled from the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016 but debuted at a lesser-known festival that same year. Bigtree also hosts a YouTube channel about vaccines that has 45,000 subscribers.
Del was also in Alexandria in October 2020, as we reported in Small town MN freedom fighting restauranteur's anti-vaxx pals make us pause about her savvy:
And Del Bigtree?
In a recent tweet, he wrote: "The rushed EXPERIMENTAL COVID VACCINE ROLLOUT could be the greatest scientific blunder in the history of mankind. Those who trust blindly will be remembered for their DARWIN AWARD. "
NBC News reported in Covid-19 vaccines face a varied and powerful misinformation movement online:
Facebook removed the page for the online anti-vaccination show The HighWire this month for violating policies on "misinformation that could cause physical harm," the company said. YouTube had removed the show’s channel in July after reports that host Del Bigtree was downplaying the severity of the coronavirus pandemic on his show and suggesting viewers intentionally expose themselves to Covid-19.
Yep: go out and catch you some COVID, gentle readers.
BigTree founded the Informed Consent Action Network in 2016; according to Wikipedia:
The Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) is one of the main anti-vaccination groups in the United States. Founded in 2016 by Del Bigtree, it spreads misinformation about the risks of vaccines and contributes to vaccine hesitancy,[1][2][3] which has been identified by the World Health Organization as one of the top ten global health threats of 2019.[4][5] Arguments against vaccination are contradicted by overwhelming scientific consensus about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.[6][7][8][9]
One can follow the money behind BigTree's group in How a New York billionaire-funded anti-vax group is contributing to the vaccine hesitancy that's crippling the US recovery at Business Insider.
Not bad for a non-doctor guy who produced a handful of episodes of Dr. Phil and worked for The Doctors for five years.
Bluestem suspects StoptheMandateMN.org is simply trying to ramp anti-mandate politics up from the last medical freedom rally at the state capitol last month. State representative Mary Franson, R-Alexandria and senator Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, weren't burdened with have to raise lawyers retainers from the from the gathered throngs. Perhaps celebrity will do the trick.
Image: The event image we're seeing shared on Facebook.
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I wondered about “BigTree”, especially after noting (via his somewhat suspect Wikipedia entry) that his father was an evangelical minister named Groverland, what the story was with his Indigenous-sounding name. Here’s the story— his mother was half Mohawk. https://unityofboulder.com/people/norma-groverland-2/
Does he flog his Native ancestry in his appearances?
Posted by: Maria Jette | Sep 08, 2021 at 01:24 AM