Letter to the Washington State Board of Health, by Margaret Anna Alice

“Everything went strictly ‘by the book,’ using means that were permitted by the constitution. At first there were ‘emergency decrees’ by the president of the Reich, and later a bill was passed by a two-thirds majority of the Reichstag giving the government unlimited legislative powers, perfectly in accordance with the rules for changing the constitution.”

—Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler (paperback, Kindle, audiobook)

I am writing regarding the following proposed policies you will be discussing at your January 12, 2022, meeting:

• Allowing local health officers to use law enforcement (WAC 246-100-070) to force an emergency order to involuntarily detain a person or group of persons (families) to be isolated in a quarantine facility (WAC 246-100-045) following refusal to voluntarily comply with requests for medical examination, testing, treatment, counseling, and vaccination (WAC 246-100-040). These specifics come from WAC 246-100.
• Including the Covid-19 injections as part of school immunization requirements using WAC 246-105.

Although this letter is addressed to the Washington State Board of Health, I am actually writing to you—you, the living, thinking, feeling individuals who serve on this board.

I am writing to you, Umair Shah.

I am writing to you, Keith Grellner.

I am writing to you, Tom Pendergrass.

I am writing to you, Fran Bessermin.

I am writing to you, Elisabeth Crawford.

I am writing to you, Vazaskia Crockrell.

I am writing to you, Stephen Kutz.

I am writing to you, Temple Lentz.

I am writing to you, Bob Lutz.

I am asking that you listen not in your capacity as a board member but as a fellow human being, as a neighbor, as a friend.

For nearly a year, you have been gradually conditioned to view the unvaccinated as enemies. You have been subjected to a relentless propaganda campaign designed to divide you from us; to dehumanize us; to paint us as science-deniers, conspiracy nuts, spreaders of disease, and threats to society.

“Men under pressure are first dehumanized and only then demoralized, not the other way around. Organization and specialization, system, subsystem, and supersystem are the consequence, not the cause, of the totalitarian spirit.”

—Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 (paperback, Kindle, audiobook)

The United States Holocaust Museum describes this process as “Defining the Enemy: The Excluded”:

“One crucial factor in creating a cohesive group is to define who is excluded from membership. Nazi propagandists contributed to the regime’s policies by publicly identifying groups for exclusion, justifying their outsider status, and inciting hatred or cultivating indifference.… But a second, more sinister aspect of the Nazi myth was that not all Germans were welcome in the new community. Propaganda helped to define who would be excluded from the new society and justified measures against the ‘outsiders.’”

Regardless of what the propagandists have told you, we are not your enemies. We are your neighbors; we are your colleagues; we are your friends; we are your family members—your grandparents, your parents, your siblings, your children.