Congratulations NY! The legislature went home. No bad vax bills passed!

Congratulations, folks, we did it! The New York legislature adjourned this morning at 2 am without passing any of dozens of bills creating new vaccine mandates, taking away your right to keep your medical records private, and giving the vaccine industry direct access to your kids without your knowledge or consent, among many other awful bills. And we did it during the most intense period of medical hysteria in living memory.

This is the third year in a row that we have stopped ALL bills we wanted to stop. We stopped them because you took action. You called, demonstrated, marched, sent emails, letters, faxes, zoomed, tweeted, posted. 5,000 of us showed up in Albany on a freezing cold January day for the opening day of the legislative session. That scared our leaders so badly that they locked us out of the Capitol and the Legislative Office Building, and even though every other building in New York is open our precious elected cowards still refuse to let us in our own buildings.

Children’s Health Defense New York has been in the thick of this fight since 2019. Please help us keep up the fight for you and your children by donating here.

We had a scare in the past few days when the Assembly passed A279a, Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried’s bill to force all adults’ vaccine records into a state database. But the vote was taken after it was clear that the Senate would not, and did not, take action on Sen. Brad Hoylman’s identical bill S75a, and therefore had no chance of passing. So it seems the vote was more of a parting bone thrown to Gottfried, who is retiring after 49 years in the Assembly, the longest stint in New York history.

We are spared further threats to our children’s health from our legislature until they return in January, 2023. In the meantime, we have three elections coming up in quick succession. A primary for the Governor and Assembly races on June 28, another primary on August 23 for Congressional and State Senate candidates, and the general election on November 8. Our goal is to get rid of as many threats to our rights and our children’s health as possible. Anyone who voted to repeal the religious exemption to vaccine mandates in 2019 needs to go. Anyone who does not support the basic human right of informed consent and parental rights to make medical decisions for our children must be stopped.

Our movement is far larger and better organized than ever before. Our numbers are big enough now to decide the outcome of many elections. The pols know this, and we must remind them of it, and use our numbers to go on the offensive. We have been on the defense for years. Now it is time to make clear to anyone seeking office that if they do not move our agenda forward we will find someone who will.