The John-Henry Westen Show - October 25, 2021


United Airlines pilot leads COVID revolt, files medical freedom lawsuit with 2,000 fellow workers


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

161.99615

Word count

2,110

Sentence count

153

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Captain Sherry Walker has been a pilot for over 30 years and has been involved in the airline industry for over 20 years. She is the co-founder of Airline Employees for Health Freedom, a group representing thousands of airline workers who are fighting for their religious freedom.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to this episode of the John Henry Weston Show. We are here to showcase for you one of the people who are standing up. In fact, not only one of the people, one of the people who started an organization to represent thousands in her industry in order to push back. And that industry is the airline industry.
00:00:17.580 Believe it or not, the airline industry is standing up. Specifically, this captain, Mrs. Sherry Walker, who has been a pilot for 30 years, a captain for 20 years, is fighting back. And she's fighting back for a group of 2,000 other airline workers. She is the co-founder of Airline Employees for Health Freedom. And we're going to talk to her right now. So you're going to want to stay tuned.
00:00:47.580 Let's begin, as we always do, at the sight of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
00:01:13.860 Sherry Walker, good to be with you.
00:01:15.780 Thank you. Nice to be here.
00:01:17.580 It is a real privilege for me to talk to you because in this day and age, you've been called to be one of the heroes. You are a person who is standing up for freedom, for the rights of so many people. It's unbelievable that there's 2,000 people in this lawsuit. Tell us about it, if you will. And what was your inspiration in beginning this?
00:01:39.080 Well, first of all, thank you. I don't consider myself a hero. I consider myself a humble servant. United Airlines, on August 6th, instituted a mandate for vaccinations for all workers, zero exception.
00:01:52.000 Fortunately, Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Code affords people the opportunity, if they choose, to exercise their faith-based entitlement to a reasonable accommodation.
00:02:03.780 The process at United Airlines was onerous and potentially not legal, depending on how that turns out in court.
00:02:11.900 So together, we banded. We started the first night, I think we had 184 people, which by a Friday night, by Sunday morning, we had 600 and change.
00:02:21.240 And today, we have approaching 4,000 members, of which 2,000 have joined on to our lawsuit, which we filed in the Fifth Circuit in Texas to stand up for our religious freedoms.
00:02:33.660 Absolutely amazing. And we've seen it in a lot of industries right now. A lot of people are sort of intimidated to stand up.
00:02:43.220 They're taking early retirements or some of them are just saying, oh, I'm throwing in the towel and just quitting and trying to do something else.
00:02:49.920 What's your message to them? You've been an inspiration to so many already. That inspiration needs to spread. What's your message to them?
00:02:59.320 Well, our first message is you're not alone. We have a program, we call it Your Battle Buddy.
00:03:03.560 So everybody found, our prayer warriors found somebody who needed a shoulder to lean on.
00:03:08.520 And we keep a telegram chat, which is so motivational. If somebody's maybe waning or struggling a little bit, they'll put in the chat that I need a prayer, I need a help.
00:03:19.340 And somebody will take them aside and put an arm around them. So usually when I fly airplanes, I'm up at the top in the pointy end of the jet.
00:03:27.400 And I don't get a lot of interaction with those folks who gently put the bags in the cargo holds and the folks that turn the wrenches.
00:03:34.260 And what we found is it doesn't matter what department you're in across any industry, you can find similar believing faith-based people and you stand together strong.
00:03:44.420 So in the name of the Father, we are standing here today to say no more. You cannot tread on our faith. We have constitutional rights.
00:03:52.880 Absolutely amazing. It is. It's quite interesting, too, that a lot of the people that are coming out to defend freedom, to fight back against the basic, it's like a juggernaut of the mainstream media, in addition to coercive government.
00:04:09.880 They actually are finding the strength to do so with their faith.
00:04:16.020 Absolutely. You know, the reason I believe my history lessons teach me that we actually founded America was so that we could have the right to pray to the God of our choice in the manner in which we see fit.
00:04:26.940 And that's the very foundation of our nation. And I believe it's under attack.
00:04:32.060 I have a 16-year-old son and people ask me all day, why are you doing this? Why are you dedicating 24 hours a day to this?
00:04:39.640 And I said, because I don't want him to look back at me in 10 years and say, Mom, you had a chance to stand up for me and my rights.
00:04:47.980 So I'm going to fix it and you didn't fix it. So I'm going to try my best to fix it today so that he can live a faithful life as well as his children.
00:04:55.280 You have a storied career. You have an airline pilot is, and particularly a captain, is something that's revered by so many.
00:05:04.660 It's something that people work towards and sort of idealize. There's movies made about it and so on.
00:05:10.400 And some people would say, you are just throwing away all of that prestige. What are you doing?
00:05:17.280 There's something bigger than all that. I look at it like this.
00:05:20.200 20 years ago, this nation was under attack, specifically the airlines, and the nation rose to our defense.
00:05:27.880 So for 20 years, I have thought to myself, how do I ever repay that?
00:05:31.360 Our industry recovered. Our city was rebuilt.
00:05:34.980 Unfortunately, we lost a lot of people in a war, and we've seen how that's turned out most recently.
00:05:38.800 But it dawned on me when this mandate started coming down and the attacks on our faith that perhaps maybe it was time for the airline industry to step up and pay back the nation.
00:05:49.280 So if restoring our faith comes through those of us in this industry who are under attack right now, and I know many in other industries are as well,
00:05:57.360 But if we can pay back to the nation that debt, we'll succeed in this manner, I believe.
00:06:05.520 So we'll set case law that will hopefully protect those and many other industries.
00:06:10.040 It's an amazing thing that this is coming from the people.
00:06:14.580 Apart from a few very notable exceptions, much of the religious leadership, even in the Christian churches,
00:06:23.000 has not only given way to this pressure, but is actually sort of piling on with it, encouraging this nonsense,
00:06:31.160 even though it flies in the face of conscientious objection, which all true religions regard as sacrosanct.
00:06:41.420 What do you make of that? And what's your message to religious leadership?
00:06:46.560 I'm not really sure. We look several hundred years later at Martin Luther, for example, as an activist on which my faith was founded.
00:06:56.240 And I wonder where they are today. You know, we have so many people out there yearning for leadership.
00:07:02.780 And yet the faith organizations, are they no different or no better than the corporate world? 0.99
00:07:09.960 I don't know. And so I am revered by the law firm that we selected, Shar Jaffe, a leader in religious liberties.
00:07:17.820 They helped the California pastor open his church.
00:07:20.700 So if we have to even go around organized faith to to still defend our beliefs, then that's what we will do.
00:07:29.660 So we will take just like we'll take the nation back, we'll take back our churches, too.
00:07:33.580 So maybe there's a warning out there for them to come on board and start defending those of us who who really want to worship our God in our way.
00:07:42.520 We at LifeSite News are doing a life thunder for you, for your case.
00:07:46.460 Tell us a little bit about the details of your case. When is it? What's going on with it?
00:07:51.540 We actually filed our complaint on the 20th of September.
00:07:56.780 On the 21st, we applied for a temporary restraining order.
00:08:01.520 The basis of the case right now, obviously, we are looking at the abusive and collusive nature, retaliatory, etc.
00:08:09.080 But at the bottom line is the airline has said absolutely no one without a vaccination will fly their airplanes.
00:08:17.660 So their reasonable accommodation has been an offer of unpaid indefinite leave.
00:08:22.760 That basically amounts to self-furlough or career-ending decision.
00:08:29.040 That doesn't seem very reasonable.
00:08:30.420 So we went to court on the 24th of September and in lieu of a temporary restraining order, the airline offered us two weeks status quo.
00:08:44.700 Of course, within 12 hours of that agreement, they reneged on that.
00:08:47.800 So eventually we ended up the judge granted us the temporary restraining order without application.
00:08:53.400 So we had a hearing on a preliminary injunction, was that, a week ago, yesterday and today.
00:09:01.960 I'm lost. I know days of the week. I don't remember the numbers. It's been so nonstop.
00:09:07.180 But that preliminary injunction hearing left us with a really good feeling.
00:09:13.080 And then there was one last question in the judge's mind.
00:09:15.420 So we filed for our answer to his question.
00:09:18.600 In fact, his question was, through all of this and your reasonable accommodation process with your employer, where are your unions?
00:09:25.520 And we, of course, asked the same question.
00:09:27.780 So that was one he wanted an answer to and he didn't get.
00:09:31.120 And then yesterday morning, the judge decided that he would force one day of mediation.
00:09:36.420 So next Tuesday, we will be in Fort Worth in the day of mediation,
00:09:40.260 although the company has made an offer to us that has been summarily denied, which was unpaid indefinite leave.
00:09:49.000 And we'll look at it again in six months.
00:09:50.820 So we really got nowhere.
00:09:53.300 But we're headed into mediation, a very expensive process.
00:09:56.480 But we will continue, as the good Christian soldiers we are, plugging forward.
00:10:02.500 We don't believe in illegal job actions or anything like that.
00:10:05.040 We're just going to put our heads down, believe in our faith, follow the law, go through the process and believe that Judge Pittman, in the end, will do the right thing for us.
00:10:13.540 And you might be called to go on to higher courts.
00:10:15.780 Who knows?
00:10:16.560 But we at LifeSite are going to commit to a couple of things.
00:10:19.380 One, to praying for you and the success of your case.
00:10:23.060 But also to those of us who can.
00:10:26.160 Let's try and make a contribution.
00:10:27.740 Go to LifeFunder.com and look up the support for the lawsuit that Sherry and her companions are launching against United.
00:10:37.040 And we really do pray that this works out well.
00:10:40.260 You're an inspiration to us here.
00:10:42.080 And to the many who need to stand up, thank you for pushing back.
00:10:46.700 Thank you.
00:10:47.500 May God bless you, Sherry, all of your colleagues who are with you in this.
00:10:50.780 And God bless all of you.
00:10:52.140 We'll see you next time on The John Henry Weston Show.
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