NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.—After actively attempting to remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office during the 2021 gubernatorial recall election, Rescue California held a Zoom press conference recapping the recall efforts and current issues facing Californians.
Newsom’s “emergency executive power has shaped the lives of Californians for nearly two years now and has affected over 400 laws,” Dunsmore said.
Angela Marsden, owner of the Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill in Los Angeles, said many small business owners struggled to make it through the state-imposed lockdown orders.
Amid the lockdown orders, Marsden created a viral video about a movie production site operating outside her pub while she was ordered to remain closed.
“They’ve made it impossible to survive,” Marsden said. “So many people are leaving and bailing California, and some of us have to stay and fight.”
Erica Kious, former owner of eSalon in San Francisco who exposed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for not wearing a mask indoors despite the mask mandate spoke on behalf of governmental hypocrisy within the state.
Kious, who is a first-generation American who built her success on her salon, said she lost her business as a result of the pandemic.
“We’ve seen the hypocrisy of Nancy’s still doing stuff and meeting with people with no mask,” Kious said, adding that Newsom also violated his own lockdown orders when he visited the French Laundry. “It’s again that these politicians can go out and do freely what they want to do, and yet let people like us, small businesses and regular folks, completely suffer,” she said.
Marc Klaas, whose daughter Polly Klaas was kidnapped and murdered in 1993, spoke out against California’s criminal justice system.
In the 1990s, the government was failing to keep the public safe as criminals received reduced sentences and lessened accountability, Klaas said.
“We’re kind of moving in that direction again,” Klaas said.
Klaas highlighted the increase in murders, property crime, and commercial theft that’s flooding cities being accredited to Assembly Bill 109 and Proposition 57.
AB 109 allows for defendants who are convicted of nonserious felonies to serve in a local jail. Prop 57 allows for the consideration of parole for nonviolent defendants.
“We have to get to a place where people are understanding what’s going on and are willing to do something about it, and are willing to hold our politicians to the fire for the laws that they’re passing,” Klaas said.
Rescue California was a leading proponent in the recall efforts against the governor throughout 2020 and 2021. The organization will be presenting on statewide issues regarding the supply chain backlog, high gas prices, and the increase in crime.
A spokesperson from Newsom’s office said the state of emergency “ensures that the state can continue to respond quickly to evolving conditions as the pandemic persists,” and that the governor will end the emergency once “conditions no longer warrant an emergency response.”
