With dance music blaring, Trump flags flying and homemade signs stating their positions, about 20 people paraded around the green in Brookfield Center on Dec. 13 to protest.
They protested the election results that named Joe Biden as the next president. They protested Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s policies addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. They protested the treatment of Donald Trump. They protested tyranny in all its forms. And they protested the media’s reporting and “censorship” of their views.
People driving by honked their horns and shouted words of encouragement, eliciting “woo hoos” from the protesters.
“There’s been more honking and thumbs up than there’s been middle fingers” said Kevin Johnson of Akron, who carried a large Trump 2020 Keeping America Great flag.
The protesters didn’t believe that Trump could earn more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 and lose, or that Biden could win without winning Ohio and Florida. There’s only one explanation, they said: fraud.
“All news is local and local said Trump won,” said Cathy Lukasko, Trumbull County Republican Party auxiliary chair, referring to Trump’s taking Trumbull County.
“We support our president until it’s been formally decided that Biden was elected fairly,” she said. “We believe Trump is our president.”
“This was a landslide for Donald Trump,” Johnson said.
Jack Canzonetta, Warren, Ohio, called the “stealing” of the election the biggest scandal in the country’s history.
“The whole world is watching us,” he said. “They’re all watching us because they can’t believe this man lost. They cannot believe we stooped that low to a third-world country. That’s why I’m out here, because all the good he did will be erased quickly.”
Falisha Simeon
“We are fighting against the election fraud that happened because it’s really something that’s good vs. evil, and I believe that good will prevail,” said Falisha Simeon of Brookfield, who organized the event for the conservative group Free Ohio Now.
Turning to other matters, Simeon was critical of DeWine and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf for their mask mandates and limiting of business operations, which she said is ruining the economy, and bans on large gatherings that have resulted in churches closing their doors to traditional services.
“I think, we’re all adults; we should be able to make decisions as an adult if we want to go into a place of business, if we want to be able to go to eat, if we want to have a drink at 10:30 at night; I think that we should be able to,” Simeon said.
“Part of it is religious freedom, too,” Simeon said. “If we’re not fighting for that, if we’re not standing up to be able to go to church where people are so hopeless and hurting right now, and you’re allowed to have 1,000 people in Walmart, but you can’t have 50 people in church, that’s totally stepping on our rights. If they take that away, everything else will be taken away, all our other first-amendment rights, especially.”
While Simeon believes the COVID-19 pandemic is real, just overblown by government officials, Ethan Crecraft called it “planned and manmade.”
“Either way, if people are dying, or not, the government don’t care, just like they do with 9/11,” said Crecraft, formerly of Brookfield, who now lives in Pierpont, Ohio.
Crecraft said he’s not going to wear a mask, he’s not going to adhere to a curfew, and he’s not going to get a vaccine. Any efforts by DeWine to convince or order people to do any of those things are acts of tyranny, he said.
“They’re gonna have to kill me before they give me the vaccine,” he said. “That’s just my right. I believe it’s my right. I believe that government shouldn’t try to tell me that I don’t have the right.”
