How to protest when you’re immuno-compromised and can’t hit the streets? ‘Plane banner!’
The roar of a small plane joined the sound of bullhorn speeches, and the protesters at Tuesday’s ReOpenNC rally turned their heads to the sky.
For a few seconds, they all cheered, thinking an airborne supporter had joined them from 1,000 feet over Raleigh. “Woo!” said Adam Smith, one of the organizers. “Look at that!”
Then they read the banner towed behind the plane: “Fewer graves if we open in waves.”
The cheers turned to sneers.
“That ain’t us, bro,” one protester complained.
The plane banner made perhaps the biggest splash at ReOpenNC’s fifth week of protests, a personal triumph for Todd Stiefel, the Raleigh philanthropist who rented it.
Stiefel had wanted to add his voice the debate because, as a teen, he developed common variable immune deficiency, or CVID. The idea of people calling the virus a hoax and flouting public health restrictions rankled him.
But his risk for coronavirus is so great that doctors have advised him not to go out and to avoid even takeout food.
“It makes me both angry and sad,” said Stiefel, 45. “You see people doing things that are proven to spread the disease. I’m not happy about people pushing to go back to this nonexistent reality.”
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He wanted to counter-protest, as have many medical professionals. His family urged against it.
He thought of hiring security guards. He worried he would start a brawl.
Then it hit him.
“Wait a minute,” he thought. “Plane banner!”
It cost Stiefel $3,500 to have his banner printed in Florida and flown here, money he considers well-spent.
He described himself as an investor and activist, and in a 2010 News & Observer profile, he explained how he began a life of giving to secular and atheist causes after GlaxoSmithKline bought his family’s business.
“It makes me happy to be able to speak up for the voiceless,” he said. “This is for a lot of people who can’t be out there. It’s easy to make a big show when you break all the rules and ignore advice from medical professionals.”
He’ll do it again, he said, but likely not in Raleigh. For plane banners, the novelty only works once.
This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 4:53 PM with the headline "How to protest when you’re immuno-compromised and can’t hit the streets? ‘Plane banner!’."