Health care workers discuss vitriol at Tennessee school meeting on masks: 'I am not the enemy'
Threats, shouts and cursing peppered Williamson County health care workers, who for the past 18 months have been on the front lines of the pandemic in Tennessee. The vitriol hurled against them came from a mob of hundreds of anti-mask parents who were enraged that doctors and nurses asked the school board to pass a mask requirement for students in the district just south of Nashville.
Before Dr. Brit Maxwell and his wife, a nurse practitioner, stepped into an angry mob of anti-mask protesters, he turned to her and said, "Just remember, you're the one who wants to save their lives."
The couple then linked arms and stepped outside, where he said a protester shoved a finger in Maxwell's face and called him a traitor for supporting the board's decision to require elementary school children to wear masks.
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Maxwell, an internal medicine physician, has watched the pandemic cripple the world for the last year and a half. He's seen patients die, and recently, he's seen the delta variant ravage Middle Tennessee. Younger people are getting sicker. They die alone, terrified.
While he and his colleagues were revered as heroes a year ago, they were ridiculed by parents Tuesday night. He's unsure how distrust of the medical community became so rampant, but he wants to bridge the divide.
“I want people to hear that I am not the enemy," he said. "We’re stretched to the max as it is to help those who are already sick. To be called a traitor and treated like the enemy, I can’t fathom it.”
A video captured by the Williamson Home Page shows a masked man leaving the public meeting to be met by a mob of people angry at him for speaking out in favor of coronavirus safety protocols. They berated him as he walked to his car.
"Take that mask off," one woman demanded.
"Keep it calm," one man warned to another screaming dissenter. "The police are on our side." Then he turned to the masked man and said, "We know who you are. And we will find you."
Deputies and police officers struggled to control the crowd as it encroached on the man's car. A Williamson County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman said no arrests were made or citations issued at the meeting. No reports were filed, and the sheriff's office wasn't investigating anyone as of Wednesday.
'We have tools, we have knowledge'
Epidemiologist Jessie Hawkins arrived to the meeting three hours early to ensure she'd have a seat. She attended the meeting with her daughter, a co-worker and her co-worker's daughter. Her education and career have focused on pandemics, and before the coronavirus, she thought any pandemic the world faced would burn out quickly thanks to advanced health care and technology.
“I could not figure out – and now I feel silly – how we could just sit back and let it happen to us when we have tools, we have knowledge," she said.
Ahead of the meeting, she knew parents who were against health protocols would be there, but she remained optimistic that despite opposing views, they wanted the same thing: to keep kids safe. That view dissipated within "minutes if not seconds" after her arrival.
When her group left the meeting, she said a man got in her daughter's face, screaming and hurling curse words. Protesters called them demonic, cowards and said they were going to hell, Hawkins said.
Deputies escorted the women to their car. Sheriff Dusty Rhoades estimated the outdoor crowd swelled to 600. Only one or two deputies are typically assigned to the education meetings, but on Tuesday, the Williamson County Sheriff's Office sent 11.
“We didn’t sleep well last night," Hawkins said.
A local doctor, who attended the meeting and spoke with The Tennessean on the condition of anonymity over fear for her children's safety, said she kept her children out of school Wednesday.
She left the meeting halfway through when she sensed the board would vote in favor of a mask requirement. She worried about how the crowd would react.
When she and another physician walked to her car, she was heckled by the crowd. She said a man took a photo of her license plate as she drove away.
“The hardest thing was to be exposed to that much extreme hate and to witness those in authority allow the hate," the doctor said.
Anti-mask protesters inside the meeting lambasted health care workers as well. And while board chair Nancy Garrett reminded the crowd of decorum rules multiple times, it didn't quell the countless interruptions, boos, or hisses from detractors while pro-mask mandate parents spoke.
Garrett posted on Twitter that she'll handle the crowd better at future meetings but there were "lots of extenuating circumstances" at Tuesday's meeting.
Nurse might move her family
A Vanderbilt urgent care registered nurse, who agreed to speak with The Tennessean on the condition of anonymity over fear for her and her family's safety, was perplexed that only 18 months ago, she and other front-line health care workers were applauded nightly and hailed as heroes. Not anymore.
“It’s such a hard turnaround to doctors and nurses being hailed as heroes, and now we’re being thrown under the bus for trying to protect the children of the parents yelling at us," she said.
The nurse spoke publicly at the meeting and left soon after because she feared the reaction of the anti-mask crowd after the board members cast their votes. As she left the meeting, she said, protesters yelled at her, shouted anti-mask chants and heckled her for being "afraid" and wearing her mask.
“It was very stressful," she said. "I jumped out of an airplane, and that was less stressful than that. I’ve just never in my life experienced something like that."
The mother of two said in some ways the beginning of the pandemic was more manageable than what health care workers are facing now when cases are preventable by a vaccine but continue to rise among the unvaccinated. Now, with ways to squash the virus and people choosing not to, is unbearable.
After Tuesday's reaction from the anti-mask crowd, the nurse said she and her husband are considering moving away from Williamson County. While they love their community, the nurse said she doesn't know if she can bring herself to stay after she watched parents devolve into a screaming mob.
"It's just really scary to raise my kids here now,"
Follow Brinley Hineman on Twitter: @brinleyhineman.