“You're not a hero if you’ve got a multimillion-dollar deal from Nike. You're a hero when you stand up against the majority for what's right, and that's exactly what Kyrie is doing,” said NYC Council candidate Mark Szuszkiewicz, who was among the hundreds who rallied on Oct. 24 in support of Brooklyn Nets basketballer Kyrie Irving, who’s been banned from playing for not taking the vaccine. Attendees were also making a general stand against NYC vaccine mandates.

“A lot of African American people are familiar with the CDC’s Tuskegee experiments, when they ... gave black servicemen syphilis, and didn't tell them, and were conducting experiments on them,” a man using the alias Aaron said, citing historical reasons for suspicion of government-administered medication.

A number of attendees I spoke to were not against the vaccines, but afraid of encroaching totalitarianism in the guise of vaccine mandates.