Anti-Vax Event Featuring NBA Hall of Fame Player Draws Hundreds in Wenatchee
Emceed by a Chelan Douglas Health Board member, speakers at the event took aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci and 'the globalists' for instigating 'the plandemic'
Chelan-Douglas Health District board member Bill Sullivan welcomed NBA hall of fame player and Gonzaga legend John Stockton to the stage at the Wenatchee Convention Center on Saturday, Jan. 28 to give the keynote speak at an anti-vaccine event that drew a crowd of about 200.
The event, titled “Pandemic Response Harms Listening Session,” was emceed by Sullivan.
“So who is the enemy? I prefer to say ‘opponents,’ but here’s a couple of them listed,” Stockton said. “Wealthy globalists who trifle with our lives. They use philanthropy. They use technology to hide behind and censor information. They manipulate elections and elected officials and they use vaccines to reduce the population in the name of global warming.”
Also on the list of enemies is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, President Joe Biden, the medical establishment, the media and pharmaceutical companies.
Stockton spoke to a crowd of about 200 in the grand ballroom of the convention center.
Pastor Gene Helsel of Kings Cross Church in Wenatchee gave the opening prayer and Grace City Church Youth Pastor Brian Blair gave the closing prayer at the event.
Newly-elected Chelan County Commissioner and health board member Shon Smith was also in attendance, as well as Wenatchee School Board member and Grace City Church follower Katherine Thomas. Fellow GCC follower Dave Bernstein, “brand manager” for the local Townsquare Media affiliate, was also in attendance. His media group ran ads on local radio stations they own promoting the event.
Sullivan, a military veteran, opened with a reference to the film “A Few Good Men” and then moved on to blaming COVID-19 vaccines for blood clots, stroke, “reproductive issues,” autoimmune disease and complained that “any assertion to that extent” was labeled as “misinformation” by the so-called experts.
“People know something’s wrong but they’re not being heard by their government, their governor, elected representatives and the bureaucrats in the public health sector,” he said.
Before he introduced the first speaker, Sullivan took a moment to highlight a few of the organizations involved with the event. One was Turning Point USA, co-founded by right-wing activist and radio host Charlie Kirk. The stated mission for that organization is “to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.”
The event was billed as a “listening session” to give those who were negatively effected by the COVID-19 vaccine or the pandemic response a safe space to tell their stories.
Former Costco pharmacist Kim Darlington was the first to do so, and once she took the stage she said it wasn’t an anti-vaccine event, only an anti-COVID vaccine event. She said the COVID-19 vaccines were different and talked about how she came to the conclusion that something wasn’t right after administering them for about a year in East Wenatchee.
“Some people were angry and even crying in the shot room because they didn’t want to get the shot but they had to, were being forced to, or they’ll lose their jobs,” she said. “It was heartbreaking.”
She said when she started to ask questions she was told to read the company memos. There was a narrative “being pushed” in her opinion and so she started to do her own research, which led her to VAERS system reports. VAERS stands for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. It’s a government program set up in 1991 to record and track negative side effects from vaccines, but since the COVID-19 vaccines were distributed it has become a useful tool for anti-vax activists to cast doubt and spread fear about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, according to Science.org.
The COVID shot should be taken off the market and not replaced because treatments like ivermectin are more effective, Darlington said.
“I believe that someday soon the media is going to have to let the truth out and it will show that the COVID-19 virus was unleashed on us intentionally,” Darlington said. This pandemic was planned and the shots were planned.”
Former ER nurse Kirsten Jerezano also spoke, and told her story of being fired for being a “critical thinker” and challenging “medical censorship and mandates.”
“During the pandemic I lost my job for educating my patients about other potentially-effective treatments for COVID-19,” she said.
She told a story about trying to get an ER doctor to take a look at a “meta-analysis of multiple studies like Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and others,” on a computer in the ER. She said the doctor refused to look at the screen and dismissed the researchers as discredited and the data as “snake oil.”
“I was accused of COVID misinformation and seen as a liability,” Jerezano said. “I was reported to the Department of Health, where they required me to write a two-thousand page essay, complete mandatory education on nursing and placed my nursing license on a two-year probation.”
She said she was hurt by Confluence’s decision to terminate her employment, but not as much as those who are the victims of “suppressed truth.” She said many of those folks were the room right there.
“I pray that you find healing and I pray that we can forgive those who have harmed us and to not add to the hate and division that consumes our world right now,” she said. “May this light a fire under us all to fight for truth and justice. Most of all may our hope not be in a healthcare system, but in a good God who is sovereign over it all.”
Evangelical Christianity was a theme throughout the event. After a short break, a man read from the second book of Timothy before sharing a story about being cut off from his grandchildren after coming back from a mission trip in Asia.
Before Jerezano took the stage they played a music video for a song called “Silence,” published on a YouTube channel titled “God-Faith-Country.”
After the intermission other local speakers like Karl Lambert and pastor John Smith of Evergreen Baptist Church in Cashmere took the stage.
Here’s a photo of the event program:
