‘Enough is enough’: Family escapes Empire State over vaccine vendetta

Everyone has their own unique COVID story and, in the beginning, the Cutlers of Staten Island were accompanied by a dream come true.

After years of saving and sacrificing, the timing of the onset of the scamdemic went hand in hand with Curtis and Liz Cutler closing on their very first home. With New York’s lockdown orders, they and their two children had to hunker down and isolate like the rest of us. But it would be in a place that truly excited them, where Curtis would complete much of the renovation projects on his own.

The Cutlers questioned whether a Christian could shoulder the spiritual risk of staying in a place that seemed bent on its own destruction.

And since Curtis was viewed as an essential worker, his bottom line never took a hit while he carried on his duties as a city sanitation worker. There was more garbage than ever to collect as people isolated in their Netflix and chill fortresses, and Curtis rightly felt confident that fit men in their 30s or 40s like him were in nearly zero danger from COVID.

The schools shutting down was no picnic for his kids, but he was confident his family would get through the crisis with the help of their strong faith. Curtis was a deacon at the same evangelical church he grew up in, which his grandfather once helped lead as an elder.

And indeed, his faith has helped see him through — but not without cost. Because when the vaccine mandates came down in late 2021, everything changed for the worse. It was a time for choosing. Would he be counted among the sheep or the bleating goats sacrificed to the god of Big Pharma?

Curtis applied for a religious exemption with little concern that he might not receive one as a deacon. But despite multiple members of the sanitation department who also attended the same church as Curtis receiving theirs, Curtis was denied and shortly thereafter terminated.

“We were viewed as essential workers until we weren’t,” said Curtis during an interview with the “New York Mandate Podcast,” which features stories like his.

Joined by 15 of his fellow sanitation workers, Curtis did not take his firing lying down. They sued and won in the Staten Island Supreme Court in October 2022. But the pharma fascists appealed the decision, and that remains the state of things to this very day — more than two years since Curtis should have been reinstated in his job.

The process was the punishment, and the Cutlers ultimately decided they were no longer willing to be its victims. It was time to move.

They remain involved in legal appeals and continue to pressure the New York City Council — albeit from a distance — to approve Resolution 5. That measure would reinstate city workers fired because of the vaccine mandate, which no longer applies in New York since Mayor Eric Adams suspended it nearly two years ago. With no relief in sight, Curtis reflected on their situation and concluded that staying put would leave his family “slowly bleeding out.”

They could not afford to remain in New York. The Cutlers also questioned whether a Christian could shoulder the spiritual risk of staying in a place that seemed bent on its own destruction.

Yes, that meant selling the new dream home. Yes, that meant leaving the church where Curtis grew up, served as a deacon, and where his family had worshipped for three generations. But when your child must go to the hospital without insurance — like the Cutlers did, due to what they see as the state’s petty tyranny — hard decisions become necessary.

Curtis and Liz now call red-state South Carolina home, refugees from New York’s chaos. Like many in their situation, this is a burden they never expected to bear. Yet it has reaffirmed for them that the most important things are worth fighting for and that their Lord will never abandon them. So onward they go.

“We are told not to fear man,” Curtis said, referring to his choice to reject the COVID jab and the path that decision set for his family. “While my driver’s license may have Caesar’s inscription on it, my body doesn’t. It is the Lord’s.”