NYC POV: “I Don’t Support Segregation Passes” Labor Leader Tramell Thompson on Vax/Unvax Solidarity

On February 7, 2022, anti-vaccine-mandate protesters marched from downtown Brooklyn, near the New York Fire Department headquarters, across the Brooklyn Bridge, to a rally in front of City Hall in Manhattan. They carried a large American flag across the bridge, along with a Canadian flag showing solidarity with Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates.

Transit worker and labor leader Tramell Thompson talked to us about why transit workers have not been subject to vaccine mandates that affect many other municipal workers in New York City, the negotiating power transit workers hold, and why he tore up his own proof of vaccination card to protest vaccine mandates, starting the #RipItUp campaign.

The protest took place ahead of a Friday, February 11 deadline for compliance with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for many municipal workers. Bravest for Choice, one of the groups participating, includes fire fighters and other city workers who faced termination from their jobs if they did not comply with the mandate by February 11. On that date, NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced that he would be finalizing the list of workers to be terminated over the weekend.

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