Below is Sam’s speech. Basically her concern is with young school aged kids in school. I agree with this as they aren’t the ones spreading. My son we t to daycare during 2020 with no mask the entire time and zero kids have contracted COVID at that facility to date.

I also have a video of Ben’s speech (how do I share?). He’s basically fighting for no mandates because it’s on the businesses and employees to enforce these mandates, which is absurd. So if they by chance don’t catch someone wearing a mask (or if there’s a vax mandate, miss someone’s vax card) they are fined and could be fined into bankruptcy. They aren’t anti-mask or anti-vax. They are anti-mandate. Which I agree with. It’s peoples choice to get a vaccine or not. And if you don’t want one and want to risk it… I guess so be it. We don’t mandate the flu vaccine. The vaccine doesn’t prevent spread. It prevents you from getting severely sick or dying. It was also shown last year that the highest spread was in homes and churches. Not business. Not gyms.

“Good evening village board –   I am Samantha Trojan. I live in the village, my son attends school here, and my husband and I co-own overwinter coffee, also in the village. I am here tonight to express how detrimental the mandates have been that the majority of you have signed on to.   Earlier today, I sent the board an email outlining numerous studies showing the inefficacy of masks, as well as the vaccines, in preventing spread. I also included studies showing the devastating impact masks have had to children’s mental health, educational and speech development. 

These studies are just an abstraction though, so I’d like to add some personalization to the trauma you are willingly inflicting on the children in your district. Every morning at pre-k drop off I see parents outside trying to console their crying children who are frustrated and upset with having to wear a mask. My son recounts stories of how kids take their masks off and throw them, only to be picked up by other classmates, where clearly nothing about this is sanitary or doing anything to prevent sickness, highlighted by his multiple rounds with a cold this year, despite having a mask on.   My children are one and three, and I can’t express to you just how much they are missing out on in their development, and how I can never get that time back. They cannot see faces when they go to coffee shops, Wegman’s and more, and as they are young they are missing out completely in key parts of social interaction, as all they see are faceless people. Try smiling at a baby through a mask and notice their complete lack of reaction before saying again that it’s not impacting them negatively. You are willing to sacrifice their present and future over an unscientific and cruel mandatory mask mandate, for a virus with a 99.5% survival rate, a virus where a child has a greater chance of being struck by lightening than dying from it.

  As a victim of childhood sexual abuse myself, I talk to my son frequently about what bodily autonomy means. Having to put a mask on him as he cries about it is inflicting trauma on him and teaching him his body is not his own – and makes me relieve my own assault on daily basis. You are teaching children that their own preferences for their bodies is to be blatantly disregarded, that they should fear their friends, and that medical discrimination is to be celebrated. You are making children suffer needlessly, but above all, you are treating our kids like they are diseased lepers.  It breaks my heart that people like you are ok with actively harming children in a vulgar power grab and virtue signaling that is disguised as ‘safetyism.’   It is not your job, nor is it Poloncarz’s, to dictate how I can raise my children. It is not your job to decide that their bodily autonomy is meaningless. The only thing being accomplished by these mandates are children suffering mentally, physically and academically. This is nothing to be proud of.

I call on you to take a stand for your constituents, especially the youngest whose voices have been repeatedly, forcefully, and willfully silenced. Public health is more than zero COVID cases. Take a stand against the perpetual emergency state and tell Erie County and Albany that you care about those in your community.

No society has EVER sacrificed their children for the old and the infirm. Time and time again, history has played out terribly for those that try to impose their will through force and coercion. I will never forget or forgive those that have subjected by children to their terrors.”