Omar Navarro, a perennial political candidate previously convicted of attaching a tracking device to his wife’s car, stood in front of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Saturday and warned that the coronavirus vaccines being distributed there were part of a mind control. project.
“What they are doing here is a massive, massive, massive indoctrination. They basically want to hurt people because this vaccination is absolutely not good, ”said Navarro in a Facebook Live video, telling viewers the location of his protest. “Basically what the left is doing is using Dodger Stadium to vaccinate people en masse.”
Navarro was one of about 50 people to protest vaccinations outside the stadium this weekend, one of the largest such venues in America. The group temporarily closed access to the site, although officials said the measure was purely a precaution.
Their ranks were filled with fringe figures who had recently attended other far-right actions as well, such as anti-mask attacks in malls and the January 6 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. The anti-mask events in Los Angeles, in particular, have been criticized, as opponents contrasted the light reaction of the police with the force directed at protests against racial justice last year.
Authorities, including officials from the Los Angeles Fire Department, temporarily stopped allowing drivers in response to the Saturday afternoon protest, a police spokesman told The Daily Beast. They added that none of the protesters was breaking the law and no arrests were made.
Still, people awaiting vaccinations described the demonstration – in which protesters waved disinformation-rich signs about masks and vaccines, both of which have proven safe and effective – as the latest complication in the administrative nightmare of securing an injection.
“The anti-vax protesters have approached the entrance to the site. The LAPD has now closed the gate. We’ll be here for about half an hour. Nobody moves, ” tweeted indie rocker Mikel Jollett, who was on the site accompanying his mother.
Do you know anything we should do about anti-mask or anti-axxer activity or the Capitol Riot? Email [email protected] or safely at [email protected] from a device that is not working.
Prior to the protest, ads were circulating on Facebook pages for anti-vaccination, including one notorious for conducting maskless raids on Los Angeles stores called Shop Mask Free Los Angeles. The group was one of the first to hype the action, the Los Angeles Times Reported previously.
That group was at the center of other headline-grabbing demonstrations, including a maskless raid on an LA mall in early January, in which participants slammed doors and demanded access to malls while masked workers tried to shut them out.
Among the various flyers promoting the vaccine event on Facebook pages against vaccination and anti-lockdown included a request that visitors actively hide their pro-Trump tendencies.
“Dress code,” someone read. “As bad as it is for me to ask, please don’t wear Trump / MAGA clothes, because we want our statement to resonate with the sheep. No flags but informative signs welcome! “
Administrators of Shop Mask Free Los Angeles did not return a request for comment on whether they hosted the event at Dodger Stadium. California resident Bryna Makowka, who attended the meeting but denied organizing the event, told The Daily Beast that the event was hosted by a man in a top hat, whose name she did not know.
That man, Jason Lefkowitz, was one of the first to promote the event on Facebook. On Twitter, where he claimed to have called the police in advance to notify them of the demonstration, he previously suggested that he organized an anti-mask shopping event in December. (He did not answer a request for comment.)
Another rally participant, Asefeh Shirafkan, shared video of herself at a number of fringe events, including the protest outside Dodger Stadium, a mask-less showdown in a target, and the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. Shirafkan, who does not appear to have entered the Capitol, recently tweeted a photo of herself in Washington with Vincent Fusca, a man many believers in QAnon conspiracy theory falsely believe was JFK Jr. is in disguise.
Shirafkan was approached for comment and texted The Daily Beast “fuck off” and a plea to watch a video about Bill Gates.
Actor Siaka Massaquoi, who did not return a request for comment, also filmed himself outside the Capitol (where he apparently had not entered) and at the Dodger Stadium rally. “Great time to protest sheep running to get a vaccine you don’t need !!” he wrote on Instagram. “The authorities closed the entrance so often because we were afraid we would ‘storm’.”
Navarro – whose campaign agency did not return a request for comment – got 32,000 views on his video outside Dodger Stadium.
“The real virus is the Democrats,” he said on Facebook Live. “That’s the real virus, guys.”