Woman Who Defied Lockdown Says Dem Governor Came After Her Family
A hair salon owner is suing Oregon Gov. Kate Brown for $100,000 for ordering the lockdowns of businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, and is also alleging that the Democrat personally used the forces of government against her when the owner reopened her business in May.
KATU-TV reported that Lindsey Graham, who owns Glamour Salon in Salem, filed the lawsuit against Brown on Dec. 18 in a Marion County court. The suit broadly states that Brown’s mandates are hurting commerce more than they are helping people stay healthy.
The suit argues that Brown’s initial March shutdown order — the “Stay Home, Save Lives” mandate — “caused greater negative health effects on Oregonians in the form of increased stress, anxiety and depression.”
The mandate cost Graham business opportunity, income and “damage to her reputation and goodwill,” according to the suit.
“The sudden, irrational, draconian, and irresponsible orders from the Defendant state of Oregon caused many people to lose their jobs, their careers and their small businesses. For many Oregonians, in an instant, their source of support and ability to provide for their families was eviscerated by an callous and unsympathetic bureaucracy,” the suit continues.
“If we can all get back to work and feed our families, then I’m going to keep doing it,” Graham said in May. “It’s my constitutional right to earn a living for my family, and I’m going to do it.”
The owner says she was fined $14,000 by Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration for allegedly operating an unsafe hair salon for her stylists, who she said at the time were voluntarily showing up as independent contractors, as KPTV reported in May.
But Brown’s alleged treatment of Graham gets even more bizarre. The salon owner claims that when she reopened her small business in May, the governor used multiple state agencies to make Graham’s life a living hell.
“OSHA finally decided that my case was closed and decided my disciplinary action is as follows: That I would received a $14,000 fine for operating a ‘hazardous facility for my employees’ which I do not have.” Graham said at a news conference earlier this month. “I have independent contractors who are choosing to work at this facility.”
Graham told Fox News on Monday that even her children were targeted.
“As soon as I tried to open my doors against the governor’s mandate back in May, she came at me with the full weight of the state,” Graham said.
“She terrorized myself, she terrorized my stylists, and she terrorized my family. She took every government agency she could, and she put her full weight into intimidating me into closing, including sending Child Protective Services to my home and threatening the removal of my children.”
Graham told the outlet that just three days after her salon’s public reopening, CPS showed up at her home and interviewed her children without her consent or presence.
The woman said the agency “opened a full-blown case against me which was completely bogus and unwarranted, and it didn’t come until I shot back at them with a threat of the lawsuit” that they finally backed off.
Graham seems intent on fighting until she declares victory against the same Democrat who allowed gatherings of leftists to burn down buildings during over 100 days of deadly rioting in Oregon’s largest city, Portland, all summer. She feels she’s been made an example of by Brown, but Graham won’t stand for it.
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The story is eerily reminiscent of that of Texas salon owner Shelley Luther, who was briefly jailed in May for refusing to close up shop. Luther successfully swayed public opinion against GOP Gov. Greg Abbott’s health order, and to his credit, the governor removed jail time as a lockdown punishment in the state.
Luther, like Graham in Oregon, and Erica Kious in San Francisco — who outed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a COVID-mandate hypocrite in September — is a determined woman who simply wants to earn a living. So why are these women the face of resistance?
Those resisting tyranny in 2020 have, in many cases, bucked the traditional image of the revolutionary.
Hairdressers and other hard-working small business owners have grown increasingly fed up with the draconian nonsense. It is they who are leading the charge against the power-hungry warlords — otherwise known as elected Democrats.
These people are being pushed to the brink of financial ruin by idiotic, overreaching and completely non-scientific lockdown orders. Will we stand with them, against those who have assigned themselves as the gatekeepers to the Bill of Rights?
This country was founded as a reaction to tyranny which was arguably much less severe than what we’re seeing along the West Coast, in Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, New York and several other states.
We took to Boston Harbor over a three-penny tea tax in 1773, and the shot heard ‘round the world was fired two years later.
Not to advocate for another echoing shot — which might or might not have already occurred in some form of non-violent resistance to the totalitarianism of Democrats and RINOs — but have the American people lost the stomach for a fight against oppression?
Not to diminish the work of those whose job it is to keep us groomed, but are we going to continue to let intrepid hairdressers alone define what rebelling against tyranny looks like?
It’s beyond time for Americans not affected directly by the chicanery to stand with their neighbors.
They can’t fine all of us.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
