MD anarchist defies Hogan's string of stay at home arrests by heading to the hills

Video-Saying "F you" to Hogan's stay at home from the mountains 1 min 40 sec

As of May 2, WUSA and other media outlets report that 35 people have been arrested in MD for defying Governor Hogan's stay-at-home order. In response, a MD anarchist shot a "fuck you" video for the Governor-from the Rocky Mountains, about 2,000 miles farther than Hogan wanted anyone in MD travelling. When police states become unmanagable, people have retreated into the mountains for centuries.

As far as social distancing and the coronavirus itself are concerned, this activist and his entire crew have actively avoided population centers and anyone else since the end of March, thus achieving the same goal the stay at home supposedly has by other means and under their own control. There are real concerns that powers (especially surveillance powers) now used to enforce quarantines and curfews will be retained after the virus is gone (or efforts to control it have failed and been abandoned) and be used for other purposes. For instance, there is now speculation that governors in GOP states might impose shelter-in-place orders in November in urban areas that tend to vote for Democrats, so as to keep those voters home and assist Trump's re-election campaign.

For their part, the GOP "reopen" protests have gone from "tea flavored" to outright fashy, with a recent Reopen rally in Michigan featuring armed right-wingers storming the state house, legislators in bulletproof vests, and the open display of swastikas, nooses, and Confederate flags. The Koch-funded backers of these protests are concerned only with "back to work" but are exploiting people sick to death of house arrest for turnout. In the process they have also created an open forum for neo-Nazis, with the Michigan incident as the worst example and the Proud Boys recruiting at other "Reopen" protests.

Anarchists by comparison have no issue with closing workplaces to stop virus transmission so long as rent payments, utility shutoffs, etc are suspended for the duration of the emergency. We also find it rather ironic that wearing masks (so long grounds for arrest) is now required in stores and most of us have no problem with requests to mask up in (now notoriously dangerous) grocery stores and similar places. People who work in grocery stores are front-line soldiers against the virus and starvation both. They have the right to insist on armor so to speak-and to ask that people set their respiratory systems on "safe" by wearing masks indoors. On this issue Hogan at least speaks sense, whateer one thinks of law itself as a policy instrument. Arresting people for leaving their homes however, is entirely another matter and Hogan unlike most governors has chosen to cross that line. Thus the need for some of us to literally "run to the hills."