51黑料网

That鈥檚 what Kelly Walker said as he walked up to Mesquite Elementary School on Sept. 2, with zip ties and a plan to arrest the principal if necessary.

It was justified, he argued, because they were 鈥渂ullying鈥� children and families by imposing pandemic quarantines he considered illegal.

鈥淚 would like anybody who can who鈥檚 close by to go to Mesquite Elementary School and back up these parents,鈥� he said via live video online. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 happening is wrong, and we鈥檙e not going to have this in our community.鈥�

The incident summed up Walker鈥檚 year as an activist against pandemic public-health measures in the Tucson area that he considers oppressive and illegal.

He accused others of taking the law into their own hands as he was taking the law into his own hands. He accused others of bullying while he tried to rouse an intimidating mob. And he claimed to represent 鈥渢he community鈥� when it is just a small segment of fellow travelers.

Later, he and the two other men who joined him in confronting the principal were cited for misdemeanor trespassing. Walker took video as he lectured the officer sent to his house.

鈥淵ou鈥檝e lost consent of the governed, because you鈥檙e following corrupt orders,鈥� he said in .

鈥淚 put my job on the line to help these people,鈥� Walker went on. 鈥淎nd you鈥檙e going to give me a criminal trespass order because I stayed there to help handle the situation.鈥�

Facebook harassment

A sense of persecution and grandiosity has characterized Walker鈥檚 public statements since he came to broader attention on Sept. 15, 2020.

That鈥檚 the day Walker appeared at a Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting and read vulgarity-laced messages that he said were directed at his business, Viva Coffee House in Rita Ranch, as a result of its resistance to the county鈥檚 mask requirement.

When he initially refused to stop reading them, then-chair of the supervisors Ramon Valadez asked deputies to remove him.

鈥淢y baristas are afraid. My family is afraid to sleep at night,鈥� Walker told the supervisors before he was pulled away.

While Walker identified his business and family as victims, people who crossed Viva Coffee, criticizing Walker or the business on Facebook, quickly became victimized themselves. They were subject to campaigns of harassment that began more than a year ago and continued up to last week.

In a lawsuit filed Jan. 22, local real estate agent Aaron Parkey accuses Walker and others of harassing him and harming his business by 鈥渕emorializing鈥� and deleting his Facebook account.

Memorializing is how people deal with the accounts of Facebook users who have died. It is shockingly easy to abuse. All you have to do to memorialize another person鈥檚 account is provide their account name, the date they died, documentation that they died, and an email address.

You can document that someone has died, even if they haven鈥檛, by posting an obituary on a free site. Harassers can then use the fake obit they wrote to tell Facebook their target died.

鈥淚 was memorialized probably 50 times, and every new account I tried to open got memorialized,鈥� Parkey said.

Eventually his Facebook account was deleted altogether. That was a problem, Parkey says in his lawsuit, because his personal Facebook page controlled the page for his real estate business.

Among the people he is suing, along with Walker, are Justine Wadsack, a former candidate for state Legislature, and her husband Garrett. The Wadsacks filed a rambling counterclaim, arguing that in fact it was Parkey who harassed and stalked Walker, the Wadsacks and others.

Walker denied responsibility for the Facebook harassment in , and he filed a brief counterclaim against Parkey, too.

Walker, who moved to the Tucson area from Oregon in July 2017, declined to be interviewed for this column. He is not formally the owner of the coffee shop, which is owned by his wife, Andrea, and her parents. But it has built a strong following among some conservatives as a result of Walker鈥檚 activism.

Walker emailed a statement in response to my inquiry about what I termed his political activism.

鈥淚 am not interested in 鈥榩olitical activism.鈥� I am a father and business owner interested in helping people who are suffering, in need or being persecuted 鈥� no matter their politics, religion or outward appearance. Beyond that, as Voltaire said, I wish to 鈥榗ultivate my own garden.鈥欌��

Fake accounts

The same sort of harassment that Parkey reported has happened to many local people who have criticized Walker or Viva Coffee House online since the debate over mask mandates ramped up in July 2020. I鈥檝e interviewed seven victims: Gregory Anderson, Sherry Brovas, Jenn Hopkins, Kymberley Moffett, Mark Sawyer, Gretchen Wirges and Parkey.

They all had Facebook accounts memorialized or deleted after criticizing Viva Coffee. It鈥檚 been a hard loss of connection for some of them, especially occurring during the pandemic year of diminished social contact.

鈥淚鈥檓 missing out on a lot,鈥� said Brovas, who is retired and used to spend some hours a day on Facebook. 鈥淚鈥檓 missing out on the acquaintanceship.鈥�

But that isn鈥檛 nearly the extent of the trouble. Fake Facebook accounts bearing vaguely vulgar names like Shay Kuhmsteen or Bren Dover have sent threatening messages or posted their targets鈥� images to a collection of memorialized accounts, placing the victims鈥� faces on tombstones or in a spider web.

Mark Owen Sawyer, a retired high school teacher, first tangled last year with what he later learned were fake accounts in the reader comments on the 51黑料网 Facebook page. He ended up with his account memorialized many times, then deleted. But it didn鈥檛 end there.

鈥淭hey made fake accounts in my name. They would put up horribly racist and sexist and misogynous stuff,鈥� he said. 鈥淥nline, they would say, 鈥楳ark Owen Sawyer is a pedophile, a communist, a satanist, a baby killer,鈥� you name it.鈥�

Just last week, when Viva Coffee made a Facebook post about its maple scones, a comment appeared underneath the post from a 鈥淢ark Sawyer鈥� account that said: 鈥淗ow much are a dozen of those. I have little boys in my neighborhood that would like them.鈥�

Moffett, an attorney who has been a harassment victim, said there鈥檚 no firm proof that it is Walker or his associates harassing them online. But the common denominator between all the cases they know was criticizing Viva Coffee or Walker online. In her case, she criticized him last year for comparing mask mandates and pandemic measures to the Holocaust.

Just Tuesday, unaware of this pattern, Gregory Anderson sent a Facebook message to Viva Coffee House objecting to Walker鈥檚 participation in the zip-tie incident, he told me. He got a message back quickly from the Viva Coffee account.

鈥淭hen I got a private message from a fake Facebook account. It was 鈥楤ren Dover,鈥欌�� he said. 鈥淚t said, 鈥榊ou look like a pedo.鈥� I didn鈥檛 respond to that. Seconds later, my Facebook page was deleted.鈥�

鈥淢y interaction with him was like a few words, then boom, my account was gone.鈥�

Masculinity is a favorite issue

Walker is a prolific writer and talker, posting many videos of himself online, and one of his top topics is masculinity. In fact, he has written in which he celebrates what he considers the truly masculine male. Not 鈥渢oxic,鈥� not 鈥渂eta,鈥� but 鈥渢onic.鈥�

Among the masculine male鈥檚 characteristics, Walker wrote, 鈥淎 good man is hard to offend.鈥� That鈥檚 last year, not long after the Board of Supervisors incident.

鈥淭here is no inherent tie between the color of one鈥檚 skin and the content of their character. However, the 鈥榯hickness鈥� of one鈥檚 skin does indicate the depth of one鈥檚 character. A 鈥榯hick skinned鈥� man is as impervious to insults and slander as a rhino is to a shot from a BB gun.鈥�

Whoever is harassing critics of Walker and Viva Coffee, of course, does not have thick skin. Quite the opposite.

But Walker sounds confident of his own masculinity and appreciative of that he sees in others. In a video he made after the zip-tie incident, Walker wore a shirt that said 鈥淓nd the War on Masculinity.鈥�

鈥淚 know from experience that when a father walks into school with an issue, it鈥檚 different than when a 5鈥� 8鈥�, 5鈥� 6鈥� woman walks in,鈥� Walker said. 鈥淲hat it is is this masculinity. We鈥檙e bold, we鈥檙e up front. We鈥檙e protectors.鈥�

In another video taken at the coffee shop in May, Walker wore a T-shirt featuring the outline of the state of Arizona with these words printed inside the outline: 鈥淒ucey Doesn鈥檛 Lift.鈥� Meaning weights, I assume 鈥� Gov. Doug Ducey doesn鈥檛 lift weights.

Storming the school board

From the time he was battling Pima County over mask mandates in September 2020, to July this year, Walker fine-tuned his political manifesto.

A version handed to a Pima County health inspector in September at the coffee shop was called 鈥淒eclaration of the People鈥檚 Primacy,鈥� but when Walker , he called it 鈥淒eclaration of the People鈥檚 Natural Rights.鈥�

He starts by asserting 鈥淭he 2020 election was demonstrably fraudulent; treasonous usurpers are now in office from the White House on down.鈥�

From that faulty assumption, it goes on to say, 鈥淲e are not declaring a rebellion, but rather that elected and appointed individuals are in treasonous sedition against the People鈥檚 Constitution鈥攖hereby nullifying the Social Contract with which We the People agreed to allow them to represent, not rule, us.鈥�

Boiling that down, he鈥檚 arguing that the people in office now, from the White House to the school board, have no authority.

So no wonder he was one of the first people past the security checkpoint when a couple hundred anti-mask protesters showed up at the Vail School District board meeting on April 27, though none of his five children attend Vail schools.

The school board canceled the meeting when the crowd pushed past security. Afterward, the protesters assembled and chose from their own ranks a putative new school board.

鈥淢eet the NEW Vail School District Board, elected by the PEOPLE!鈥� one post by the Viva Coffee House said later. 鈥淲hat an amazing choice鈥攖hese people CARE about YOU, not power, not politics...YOU! We don鈥檛 know if this will ultimately be legitimized, but we understand the sentiment.鈥�

He and the protesters were in the vanguard of loosely coordinated disruptions of school board meetings around the country, some over pandemic measures, others over critical race theory.

鈥楴o violence was done鈥�

A week before Rishi Rambaran complained about his son being ordered into quarantine at Mesquite Elementary, Walker wrote an alarming blog post.

鈥淎merica is on a sure and certain path to democide,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淪pecific patterns exhibited in governmental and social responses to this 鈥榩andemic鈥� strongly indicate that our society is on track to repeat the horrors of history.鈥�

Which horrors? 鈥淭he Holocaust in Germany, the Warsaw Ghetto genocide, the murder of millions of Russians and Chinese under Communist regimes, the Killing Fields of Cambodia.鈥�

These are, of course, preposterous comparisons. There are no real parallels between efforts to coerce people into getting vaccinated or wearing masks against a dangerous virus, and the slaughter of millions in genocides.

When Rambaran reported Sept. 2 that his son had been quarantined even though he wasn鈥檛 sick, Walker treated it as an urgent threat.

Frank Tainatongo joined Rambaran and Walker, and they gathered up the zip ties and headed to the school.

鈥淚f you insist on this, we鈥檒l call and have you arrested,鈥� Walker said as they walked up to Mesquite Elementary and he narrated live via Instagram. 鈥淎nd we鈥檙e willing to make a citizens鈥� arrest if necessary. The community has been very clear 鈥� we鈥檙e not putting up with this.鈥�

The conversation between Principal Diane Vargo, Walker and Ramparan was civil enough, but of course the implied threat of the zip ties worked. Vargo was intimidated, as she acknowledged in later interviews.

鈥淎gain, no violence was done yesterday,鈥� Walker said in a video afterward. 鈥淪omebody came in and put down zip ties.鈥�

But he鈥檚 not fooling anyone. In his short time on the public stage in Tucson, Walker has proclaimed himself above the law and acted to intimidate. A man鈥檚 strongly held beliefs don鈥檛 give him a license to bully in alleged defense of people who are being bullied.