Letter to Editor, The Hendersonville Lightning, 12/26/2021 Open Letter To The Flat Rock City Council and Henderson County Commissioners: Don’t Fund The Flat Rock Playhouse Fascism The Flat Rock Playhouse is requiring vaccine passports accompanied by a photo ID. The playhouse is North Carolina’s State Theater that receives our state tax dollars. In addition, the Henderson County Commissioners and the Flat Rock City Council are giving the Playhouse our county and town hard earned tax money. This action by Flat Rock Playhouse is the hallmark of communist dictatorships, not a 245-year-old constitutional republic like the United States of America. Funding the playhouse makes you complicit. In this country, medical privacy is the right of every American citizen. Whether we choose to take a COVID-19 vaccine or not is no one’s business - not the Federal government or the Flat Rock Playhouse. The nameless, faceless, unelected bureaucrats at OSHA were never given authority to mandate vaccine passports (with a photo ID no less) by Congress because it’s unconstitutional. Congress did not give OSHA the authority to mandate vaccine passports let alone the Flat Rock Playhouse. The Flat Rock Playhouse thinks they can discriminate and divide us, violate our individual inalienable rights, our bodily integrity, our medical privacy, and the rule of law. By funding the Playhouse, you are complicit in these egregious violations. The citizens of Flat Rock and Henderson County never gave you the right to tax us to violate our rights or to bar us from our theater. Since you have the authority to give away our tax dollars, you have the authority to them take away. Like my fellow tax payers, I pay taxes to the state of North Carolina, Henderson County, and Flat Rock. The citizens of North Carolina urge you to do the right thing in your 2022 budget. Do not fund their fascism.
Jane Bilello
