“They’re using that [power] to engage in emergency orders that simply strip us of our rights: rights to property, rights to assembly, rights to worship, and all the rights our Constitution guarantees,” she said. “I’ve been studying closing democracies for twelve years so I recognized early on. Once I realized New York state had emergency powers I know from history that no one gives up emergency powers willingly…only from studying history do I know how predictable it is when you start to have elected officials say ‘we’re not going to follow the Constitution because there’s a pandemic.’”
In the state of New York and other states across this nation, governors have continually extended the “state of emergency” orders that have given them cover to impose unconstitutional limits on our civil rights. This includes shutting down schools and depriving children of an education, outlawing funerals, church services, depriving Americans of graduations, rites of passage, ritual baptisms, the right to operate private businesses without the interference of the state, and much more.
“Nowhere in the Constitution does it say all this can be suspended if there’s a bad disease,” she continued. “We have lived through typhus, cholera, smallpox, HIV, tuberculosis, polio, the Spanish flu, we’ve lived through an attack on our soil-never has there been months and months and months of emergency powers when we weren’t actually fighting a war.”