COLUMBUS, Ohio — Since last week, protestors have been demanding that the governor open up the state, and now some political candidates from his own party are joining in the protests.
- Protesters have been at the capitol steps every day in the last week
- They want the governor to lift stay-at-home orders that they say infringes on their rights
- Political candidate joining in protest worries about economic impact
As the governor continues to make the call for people to stay at home, you can hear it from the inside — the shouts of protesters yelling through the door at the state capitol. And they aren’t letting up.
Melissa Ackison is one of them.
“We took our actions very intentionally, the intent was truly to have our voices heard and to cause that emotional disruption, so that he could feel the way that we feel,” said Ackison.
She’s a Republican candidate running for state senate, a business owner, and now a fed-up protester.
“The message is simple, open the state back up, allow those who want to be able to work to work and take care of their families or there will be no country left to leave to our children,” said Ackison.
She joined the protests after what happened to her own family. She says the government went too far and is infringing on their rights.
“My husband and my ten-year-old son were out in the middle of a field doing a land survey. We have an excavation and a land surveying company, and they were stopped by the police, asked if they were essential workers and if they had any type of paperwork to prove that,” said Ackison.
She’s not alone. Groups are coming out by the dozens on the capital steps — some defying social distancing rules to put pressure on the governor to stop them.
“I absolutely believe that the virus is a real virus, the symptoms the sickness, etcetera,” said Ackison, I’m not saying that piece of this is any type of a hoax, what I am saying is that the response to the virus isn’t being managed in a way that we’ll have any level of sustainability long after this is over,” she said.
Governor Mike DeWine says the stay-at-home order will be lifted for some businesses the first week of May, but he made it clear this will not go back to the normal we knew before coronavirus.
“We’re not gonna flip on a switch one day and the world goes back to where it was, it’s not gonna really get back to totally where it was until you have a vaccine,” said DeWine.
