Requiring students be vaccinated against the coronavirus for in-person learning at Santa Monica Community College is about more than just a virus, according to a candidate for Congress.
“I think it's about control,” said Mike Cargile, Republican candidate for California's 35th congressional district. “The essence of communism is a very small group of people controlling a very large group of people through fear and reliance. You take away their livelihoods. You take away their ability to be independent. You make them dependent on the state and then you dictate everything they do through fear.”
Cargile, a filmmaker, was responding to a lawsuit that Carter Sparks, a freshman at Santa Monica Community College, filed alleging that the school violated his religious freedom and his right to privacy when its Board of Trustees voted last year to require students to get a COVID-19 vaccine before attending in-person classes in the fall.
“We are in the midst of a communist takeover,” Cargile told the Southern California Record. “We have a bunch of elite individuals who are behind this global takedown but in a communist society, if you're on the central committee, it's not such a bad gig. You control everyone and you get the best of everything. So, it's really a new version of slavery because the people are slaves to the state. As long as you can be the new master, it’s not so bad.”
Sparks, who is Catholic, requested a religious exemption but his application was denied because he allegedly didn’t qualify, according to media reports.
“When the government dictates what it accepts as a formal religion, it is by default establishing what it considers to be a religion,” Cargile added. “If being Catholic doesn't meet our government guidelines, then our government is defining a religion it would accept. That is a blatant violation of this individual's First Amendment rights."
In the complaint, Sparks objected to being vaccinated because he had already contracted COVID-19 and believed he has developed natural immunity.
"If they're enforcing the mandate with their college campus police, then it might as well be a law but they've violated this individual's rights because he has had no due process," Cargile said. "So, we have, not just the government itself, but cities, municipalities, and universities all doing whatever they want to. The problem is we don't have a state government that's willing to defend these people's rights because it wants to trample on them in the same way."