2025 Tucson Peace Fair & No Shots for School
by Lauren McElroy, CHDAZ Tucson Coordinator
The Tucson Peace Fair and Music Festival, an outdoor festival that “gives local activist groups a chance to make new connections and celebrate old ones” had its 41st anniversary this year. The fair bills itself as “Arizona’s largest gathering of peace, social justice, environmental and labor equity groups.” Like bees going from flower to flower, attendees flit from booth to booth seeking written information or a conversation, or take some time to enjoy the live musicians playing onstage in the background.
As a long-time Tucsonan, last year I thought “Why not apply for a table at the Peace Fair for CHDAZ?” I was a bit concerned we might not be admitted if the organizers decided we didn’t fit the bill, but we registered with no problems. This year, on the registration form I was asked to answer this question: “What are your general priorities for creating Peace and how, in a perfect world, would you redirect our country’s massive military budget?” I was able to quite truthfully write that CHDAZ would use that money to provide healthy food for all children using regenerative organic agriculture methods.
I put out a call for volunteers to our Tucson CHDAZ Defenders. Arriving at different times and doing different tasks, eleven of us including CHDAZ president Ursula Conway, accomplished setting up the booth, engaging with the public for the five hours of the fair, and taking the booth down. We got there early enough to put it up at one of the fair entrances to maximize visibility. Like last year, we had a banner with our name and logo hanging on the front of our table as well as multiple CHD posters, flyers, and books for sale.
This year, we also had:
- a canopy for sun protection,
- a second table to make an L-shape,
- and a large banner on the side people would see when entering the fair, which read: “NO SHOTS FOR SCHOOL. ASK ME HOW.”
Our hope was that this would trigger conversation and opportunities to share the Arizona Personal Belief Exemption form, K-12. Included on top of that form was a compelling graph and analysis by Physicians for Informed Consent. It shows the likelihood of a child getting each of 10 childhood diseases vs. the likelihood of becoming injured by the vaccine for that illness (see image on right).
Other flyers covered overuse of vaccines for pets and children as well as the effects of EMFs, COVID-19 shots, and a small wallet card showing the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen analysis by the Environmental Working Group.
One of our members recently wrote an essay (not yet published) that “if we were able to help avoid even just one child being harmed by vaccines, pesticides or EMFs, all our work would be completely worth it.” During the afternoon at the Peace Fair one of our other CHDAZ Tucson Defenders said the exact same thing, without having read the essay.
Our participation in the fair went really well. One of the most heartening things was listening to my fellow CHDAZ team members talking with the public. I was so impressed with how knowledgeable they are and with their ability to discuss sensitive topics in a spirit of openness and caring. It was also such a blessing that everyone carried out the part of the day’s activities that he or she had committed to, which resulted in everything getting done without undue strain on any one person.
As we were setting up, I noticed that a very long line of parents and children was forming across the street at the Children’s Museum, and bending around the block. This opportunity was too good to miss and I took the exemption handout with me and walked down the line, asking parents if they’d like information on vaccines and school attendance. I definitely got some takers. Especially memorable were two mothers, standing fairly close to each other, who asked me if I knew of any pediatricians who would allow parents to make decisions about whether and when to vaccinate their children. They each said their pediatricians were threatening to drop their children as patients if they wouldn’t vaccinate in lockstep with the CDC schedule. I told them that if they wanted to exchange phone numbers I would get back to them. They eagerly gave me their numbers.
During the fair, if parents who visited our booth said they weren’t vaccinating their children I would ask them if they had a pediatrician who was supportive of that. One mother said she takes her children to El Rio, a group of clinics started in the 1970s to help low-income families. She said the clinic staff are always bothering her to get her children vaccinated, and she always tells them no, but they don’t threaten to drop her as a client.
One mother with three children and an infant strapped to her chest seemed relieved when she understood that I wasn’t trying to encourage her to get her children vaccinated. She said she and her husband don’t vaccinate their children, but she was happy to take the information on exemptions and the relative risks of vaccines vs. diseases because she wanted to share it with her friends.
Talking with people who “get it” about vaccines seemed to be an important aspect of what we were doing that day. Our conversations with them appeared to reinforce their ability to stand strong.
As the Peace Fair description stated, it was also an opportunity to celebrate old connections. One woman and I discovered that we had been in the same group of pregnant mothers having home births back in the late ‘70s. She’s now a midwife in Canada. We talked about the family we’d known in which the father had died from polio as a result of changing his baby’s diaper. She’d been vaccinated with a live virus and he was an older father. This was before the 1986 Act and there had been a lawsuit against the vaccine manufacturer for not informing the parents that this was a possibility.
Another interaction was with a group whom I took to be a family of three generations, a boy about 7 years old, his father, and his grandfather. Their accents suggested Africa. When I mentioned shots and school attendance the little boy started folding in on himself, hugging himself with his arms and looking toward the ground, saying in a small voice, “I don’t want to get a shot.” I told him I was going to give his dad some information to help him decide whether or not he would get a shot. He then seemed to understand I wasn’t trying to convince his dad to give him a shot and started standing up straight and gave me a smile. The father was very interested in the graph by Physicians for Informed Consent when I explained that it showed that in the United States the probability of a child getting any of these 10 diseases is very low and the risk of danger from the vaccines is much higher. He and his father seemed to be taking it all in and reached for the flyer. Their gratitude was serious and heartfelt.
The very last person who came to our table at day’s end was a 30-something black man with a daughter of about 10. He walked up to our table and said in a loud, cheerful voice, “Lay it on me! I want to know what I need to do. The people at the school won’t tell me anything!” And he started describing how when his daughter had been an infant she was vaccinated and it seemed to completely change her personality. She had been a very cheerful, laughing baby and after that shot she became shy and withdrawn. The girl standing before us gave a shy smile as her dad was talking with us, and was looking at the ground. The father and I talked for a while and I gave him the exemption form. He walked away with a big smile.
Another side of handing out information at an event like this is speaking with people who are vaccine advocates. Our CHDAZ president, Ursula Conway, in discussing whether or not to make the banner talking about school shots said that it would be provocative and might cause some arguments, so we should be prepared.
We did have three really angry people who came up to our booth. Thankfully, their interactions with us were spread out in time. One started out with an angrily emphatic statement: “I’m so disappointed you were even allowed to be here. Your science is all skewed. I’m a children’s librarian, so I know!” Her parting words were delivered when she picked up the book The HPV Vaccine on Trial and practically shouted, ”This shot helps people not get cancer!” One of our volunteers replied very calmly, “There’s no proof of that.” It was telling that she led with a statement on how we should have been censored.
Despite the challenges, I had such a tremendous feeling of happiness in my heart when I left the Peace Fair.
Followup: The Peace Fair was on a Saturday and on Tuesday morning I texted the two mothers who had wanted to find a new pediatrician.
One replied: “Great to hear from you! It was so nice meeting you and seeing that there are people advocating for parents & children who have made decisions not to vaccinate. It’s been quite the challenge but I am very much aware of the risk. My children thankfully are very healthy. And I want to keep it that way. We will look into the physicians you told me about. Thank you very much for that!” The other mom “loved” my text and wrote: “Thank you so much for following up. I’ll reach out today!”