Y’all keeping an eye on the Atilis story?

The Bellmawr gym reopened Monday morning in defiance of Governor Phil Murphy’s shutdown order, a situation that was covered heavily by both local and national news outlets. It’s basically ground zero for the small business vs. government conflict that’s starting to intensify across the country.

Yesterday, Tuesday, police arrested a guy for being uncooperative, and Steve Keeley at FOX 29 says that authorities are issuing summons to folks who are using the gym:

The Monday reopening took place without any confrontation involving police. One officer approached gym owners and informed then that they were in violation of Murphy’s order, then told the gathered crowd to “have a nice day,” which was met with cheers. Twice the owners have received summons for going against the shutdown order, but they’re prepared to fight as they believe this infringes on their constitutional rights.

It’s a fascinating situation from an outside perspective. Kind of like a high-stakes game of chicken. Who blinks first? Atilis? Governor Murphy? Nobody?

If the latter is the case, this could be a long and messy legal battle, but I get where both sides are coming from. On one side, you’ve got a Governor out here who thinks he’s taking proper measures to save lives and protect New Jersey residents. On the other side, you’ve got a small business on the ropes and just trying to survive. If you were backed into a corner and hemorrhaging money and facing bankruptcy or closure, you’d probably do the same thing Atilis is doing.

I think the overriding thing here is that Governors HAD to know that you can’t extend shutdown orders into the summer. The science or data might certainly justify that approach, but data doesn’t account for the human element, and people are getting incredibly anxious. They’re struggling to stay afloat financially and they’re watching everything they worked for go straight into the shitter. This week we lost two Philadelphia restaurants, which shut down permanently because of the pandemic.

Surely there’s gotta be a way to ease restrictions on small business while still taking the appropriate measures to keep people safe. Maybe Murphy can talk to the gym owners in person and we’ll settle this the old fashioned way, by agreeing on a common sense way to move forward.

Of course compromise seems impossible in 2020, so yeah.