In September 2021, the Houston Symphony issued a side-letter to the contract with its musicians, mandating that any musician not fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by the end of the month would be stripped of pay and health benefits. Cellist Jeffrey Butler was one of five musicians who declined to be vaccinated on religious grounds.
“Your DNA is your God-given expression of who you are, your soul. And I had difficulty with the idea of introducing something into my body that could change it. It went against my religious beliefs,” says Butler, a member of the Houston Symphony since 1986.
For several months, Butler was placed on unpaid leave without the safety net of health insurance. He doesn’t blame his employer.
“The Houston Symphony had a mandate like every other professional orchestra in the country,” Butler says. Furthermore, the mandate had originated with the protocols set down by Houston Methodist Hospital, the first employer in the country to impose the mandate. There was little the Houston Symphony could do. At first, the orchestra placed some of the players claiming exemptions at the required six-feet distances from other players. But that wasn’t possible for Butler, who was smack in the middle of the cello section.
At length, Butler was returned to his position. “As of February 2022, after the Omicron surge, Houston Symphony found a way to accommodate me. I am tremendously grateful to my employer to have my job back,” Butler says.
The experience made Butler aware of the damage done to some musicians who took the vaccine. One fellow orchestra member, covered in rashes and hives after taking all the boosters, told Butler he had done the right thing.
“I happen to have many vaccine-injured friends in orchestras around the country,” Butler says, citing the instance of a horn player in his prime who suffered a heart attack after taking the vaccine and its boosters.
Rather than merely feel his gratitude for good health and continuing employment, Butler decided to reach out to vaccine-injured classical musicians throughout the country with a fund-raising event: “Classical Concert Artists React.” Members of the Houston Symphony will perform the music of Bach, Schubert, and others, with all proceeds benefitting the CareFund Medical Grant Program of React19.org
React19
“I reached out to React19’s co-chairman, Brianne Dressen. She really liked the idea and brought more people on board. The sense among that group was this was something to take big. The scope changed.”
A second, very different kind of fund-raiser was added for July 22 at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. That’s when six bands and solo artists, plus half a dozen speakers, will bring the message of React19.org to Conroe, Texas. The performing artists will be headed by Five Times August, whose song, “Sad Little Man,” lampooned Anthony Fauci.
Dressen co-founded React19, a 501-3c non-profit, in November 2021, after she had endured a year of severe medical challenges following participation in a clinical trial for the AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine. In November 2020, Dressen got her one and only shot, which was followed by severe paresthesia, blurred and double vision, extreme sensitivity to sound and light, brain fog, memory loss, motor dysfunction of her legs, and loss of bladder control. Her career as a pre-school teacher came to an end.
As Dressen grew out of some, but not all, of those symptoms, she decided to take action for the thousands of fellow vaccine-injured Americans by establishing a fund that would do “the job the government is not doing.” Says Dressen:
“The government is not paying anything more than $8400 to people harmed by the Covid vaccines. We’ve made $565,000 in donations for medical expenses and are doing everything we can to get money into the hands of people who need it. When we say these people have been financially destroyed, we mean they have been financially destroyed.”
She cites her own condition, which requires medication costing $189,000 a year, as typical, adding that she does not take any money from the fund for herself.
Dressen says she was “thrilled” to hear from Butler.
“Just like everyone else, musicians were discriminated against.” Until now, it’s not been a population represented in the vaccine-injured community.
Butler looks back on the acrimony and distress of the vaccine mandate and says his aim now is to heal:
“To everyone who was treated as if we were lepers, we’re reaching out with compassion and empathy.”
