Sacramento event hosting Anthony Fauci lecture met by protest against US COVID response

About 25 people gathered Wednesday night in downtown Sacramento in protest, as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former chief medical advisor to the president, was the featured guest in a local speaker series.

Bethany Denkers, one of the organizers of the protest, said they gathered to demonstrate their opposition to federal action, led by Fauci, on COVID-19 protocols and mandates during the height of the pandemic.

“We decided to come together as a group and honor those lives that have been lost to the vaccines due to them being inadequately tested and that mandates being forced through that weren’t necessary,” Denkers said. “This is just a means of conveying a message and honoring lives that were lost because of his negligence.”

On Wednesday, Fauci was the featured guest of the Sacramento Speaker Series, a community lecture program at the SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center at 13th and L streets.

Fauci, a scientist and physician, played a key role in the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic He is widely considered to be one of the country’s most trusted medical experts.

He was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. In that time, he advised seven U.S. presidents on infectious disease threats spanning from HIV/AIDS to Ebola to Zika. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2008.

In the early stages of the pandemic, Fauci called upon all Americans to adopt social distancing measures to help reduce the expected surge of COVID-19 cases. As vaccines became available, Fauci encouraged everyone to get vaccinated and to create herd immunity against the contagious virus. In a February 2021 interview with Reuters, Fauci said political polarization contributed to the high coronavirus death toll in the United States as wearing masks became a “political statement” instead of a public health precaution.

As of Tuesday, more than 1.1 million COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Denkers said they first learned last week that Fauci would be speaking Wednesday, so they hastily planned the protest and spread the word online. She organized the protest with her fiancé, Byron Jones. They are founders of the group Back the Blue Nevada County and members of Freedom Riders 1776.

They acquired a permit from the California Highway Patrol to hold a flame-less candlelight vigil on the Capitol grounds across the street from where attendees would be lining up to be seated and hear Fauci speak. Denkers said 175 people had RSVP’d online, indicating they would be there to join the protest. But nowhere near that amount of protesters showed up Wednesday.

Those who did attend played loud music from their spot across the street, which was lined with protest signs.

“Our intention is to keep everybody on the (Capitol) grounds here,” Denkers said. “We wanna get a message across to Fauci. By no means do we want to interfere with anybody who’s here to see him speak.”

A few minutes later, most of the protesters had moved across the street to the sidewalk just outside the hall’s entrance. They chanted — one of the protesters using a megaphone — as the Fauci event attendees waited to enter the convention center.

Security guards for the venue amassed beyond the entrance to make sure protesters didn’t climb up the steps and interfere with the attendees. There were some moments when the guards had to move protesters back to the sidewalk. No one was arrested as the demonstration remained disruptive but peaceful.

“Every event we do, we start out with a prayer and just ask for people’s hearts to be opened and eyes to be opened,” Denkers said. “For us to be approachable, but also for us to have our ears and eyes wide open to other people’s opinions, as well. We welcome those conversations because ultimately we’re here for everybody.”

The Bee’s Hanh Truong contributed to this story.