After co-founding Free Now Foundation 2.5 years ago, we consistently get feedback that people don’t know where we came from (we were the original California Chapter of Children’s Health Defense) and what we do (raise funds for medical freedom education and legal work to end vaccine mandates and protect bodily autonomy).

In 2023, we were advised to keep our origins quiet, and that has unfortunately created confusion, even to this day.

I’ve been quiet as well, and I’m going to be frank with you today and share how I personally got involved, and my personal experience and observations. I don’t intend to reveal more detail than what is contained here.

I was one of the leaders who helped get this critical California medical freedom legal work off the ground in 2020. I’m both proud and humbled it has continued successfully to this day.

The work could very well have stopped in 2023.

Co-founding the California Chapter

In early 2019, I joined the Board of Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

As a business strategist, I felt CHD could become a very successful non-profit due to two factors.

First, their focus on legal work had the potential to achieve durable change.

Second, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the helm, it was the first time a vaccine safety non-profit sported a highly respected name known outside the vaccine safety movement. I knew his name would help raise funds and create broad awareness.

A friend, J.B. Handley, was on CHD’s board. He introduced me to Lyn Redwood in 2018. She was President of CHD at the time. My path to the board started there.

Lyn Redwood wanted to set up state Chapters. RFK Jr. and CHD management agreed it would be a good idea.

RFK Jr. asked me and two other CHD national board members to start the California Chapter of CHD. After a lot of back and forth, we said yes.

In 2020, the three of us co-founded the California Chapter of Children’s Health Defense, and built an initial board and made the first part-time hires.

Most of us were volunteers, donating the equivalent of full-time jobs to help guide the organization with strategy and projects.

The minute our website went live, we were barraged with requests for help with mandates and lockdowns.

Before the founding of the California Chapter, we thought our work would focus on undoing the effects of SB277 and SB276 – two bills that removed all parental rights around school vaccination requirements.

However, with the COVID lockdowns of March 2020, our entire focus turned to medical freedom legal work to fight unlawful mandates for vaccines, testing and masks, and to root out COVID corruption on the part of Governor Newsom and among Boards of Supervisors.

In 2020, medical freedom law was not a specialty. We helped build it from the ground up. One of our attorney board members began recruiting some of the best California attorneys – Jessica Barsotti, Nicole Pearson and Rita Barnett. Together they founded the Facts Law Truth Justice law firm.

Encouraged by Bobby and CHD management, we incorporated as a non-profit with a separate EIN from CHD national, and started to raise funds for the legal work we needed to do in California. With a small legal fund grant from CHD, we began to file lawsuits.

We would joke that we were building the plane as we flew it. The chaos of COVID ruled every single day. We eventually got that plane to cruising altitude.

Legal Work Was a Success

The Chapter filed nine lawsuits in 2 years, and through countless fundraisers – requiring dozens of incredible volunteers and an enormous amount of work – we raised the funds to support them.

Bobby Kennedy headlined the majority of our events, and we also featured Dr. Peter McCullough, JP Sears, Dr. Naomi Wolf, Dr. Scott Atlas, Ed Dowd, Steve Kirsch, Foster Gamble, Dr. Robert Rowen, and more.

Lawsuits are not cheap, and we managed to raise more than $5 million for both organizations in about 2.5 years. Our legal work included:

• K-12 suits (with co-plaintiff PERK) that stopped illegal COVID shot mandates at California public schools
• College lawsuits that forced two colleges to stop discriminating based on vaccination status
• Boards of Supervisor suits that uncovered corruption motivated by COVID Cash
• A suit (with CHD national) forced Newsom to retreat on his “Doctor Gag Order” law; another to force Newsom to come clean on whether or not it was an emergency was dismissed
• A masking suit still awaits a decision in the appeals court
• A 10th suit filed by CHD against the UC Colleges forced them to offer a religious exemption for the flu shot

By all accounts, we were a huge success.

I loved the balance of serving on both the California board and the national board, helping raise millions for the national group and millions for California legal work.

We had built an incredible team that was a pleasure to work with, with roughly a half dozen part-time contractors/employees and about 200 volunteers at our peak. As a new organization that had grown very quickly, we not perfect, but we did our best to carry out the original mission, per our contract with CHD.

However, in 2022, something shifted.

CHD Wanted to Change the Chapter Structure

California has always punched above its weight in terms of nationwide political and non-profit donations. Our success was outsized compared to other state chapters.

CHD wanted the dual board members to choose the California board or the national board. We chose national, knowing as Californians we could unofficially stay involved with the chapter. And we did.

Children’s Health Defense wanted to change the structure of their new state chapters. Instead of what had been set up – independent chapters with their own EIN and separate P&Ls – they wanted the chapters to be all-volunteer and raise funds for the national group only. There was talk of California funds going to other states.

The Chapter was unable to get assurance from CHD that our ongoing lawsuits in California would continue to be funded under this new structure. The proposed arrangement seemed too iffy for now-burnt-out California volunteers and no paid staff to raise money for the national group, and somehow get enough of the funding back to California for the ongoing suits.

The Chapter knew they needed to continue with some paid staff to continue the work.

The Chapter told CHD national that the new structure wouldn’t work for this state. Although CHD management didn’t love to hear that, they allowed the California Chapter to continue as an independent licensed state chapter.

More than half of what we raised went to CHD national, and we were happy with that.

“I feel kind of bad, but you just did too well.”

I’m not going to sugar-coat things. The end of 2022 was difficult, knowing that the Chapter was not making CHD national happy anymore.

I had lunch one day with someone high up at CHD. This person said: “I feel kind of bad, but you just did too well.” I think you know what this person meant.

Between that statement and the accruing disagreements, it was obvious the national group was going to shut down the original Chapter.

I was voted off the national board based on a pretense. I knew I was seen as too strong an advocate for the California Chapter. I was immediately unanimously re-installed to my original position as Board President by the California Chapter board.

In 2023, CHD terminated the Chapter’s license and we separated from CHD. A month of stress and heavy lifting later, we emerged re-branded as Free Now Foundation.

Shortly thereafter, one of our biggest critics in California became the new volunteer leader of the new California Chapter of CHD. The new California Chapter has changed leadership a number of times, and is now in great hands as an all-volunteer organization, with no lawsuits in California that I know of. I’m very happy CHD still has a strong presence in California.

I noted that other organizations – like America’s Frontline Doctors and the CHD Florida Chapter – that had done extremely well with fundraising had similar internal issues.

On top of the challenges of having a new name with zero name recognition, we were seen as the rejected step child of CHD. It was a difficult period, and while at times we felt like quitting, we were confident in the California lawsuits and felt they needed to continue for the sake of the families of California.

If we didn’t stay involved, we felt the legal work would suffer from lack of ongoing funding. We also wanted to get back to lawsuits around school mandates, so children could go to school safely in California again.

Every dollar raised was always hard-won, and more difficult as a new organization that had been rejected by CHD. I deeply appreciate every single donor who believed in us and wanted this work done. We wouldn’t be here without each of you.

On CHD

Basically, we went through an organizational divorce — the kind of thing that happens frequently when a successful state affiliate outgrows (or disagrees with) the national office. This is not an exposé. I won’t share certain details — just the topline narrative. For that reason, some may not fully understand what happened or the choices we made. But given the questions we still get, and the confusion about who Free Now Foundation is, it was past time to open up.

I still support CHD and feel they are doing incredible legal work. So many people I admire are with CHD.  CHD has a great publication, The Defender, where people can do reliable vaccine research. I send people to their publication all the time.

The legal work we do takes California specialists on the ground to identify what needs to be done. Without CHD, this work never would have been started with a focus on California. I’m still grateful to CHD for getting this work started here.

A Phoenix Rising

We had growing enthusiasm throughout 2023.

With a couple exceptions, our board remained with Free Now Foundation, including Jessica Barsotti, Dr. Jeff Barke, and others.

We moved forward with all our part-time employees & contractors, until we couldn’t afford them anymore in June 2024. Aria Morgan, our Director of Content, was the only exception. She is a gem and has been with us for more than four years.

Aimee Rickabus joined the board of Free Now Foundation, after exiting the CHD national board. Kent Heckenlively and Dr. Richard Fox joined our Board as well. All – in various ways – breathed new life into our fledging organization.

By 2024, we got our footing back. We partnered with Dr. Bill Lionberger to start raising funds for our ADA suit to expand exemptions; Jessica Barsotti is the attorney-of-record on that suit. Our board member Dr. Fox filed our due process lawsuit to end mandates in a federal district court. We await a decision in that case. I’m so very proud of the legal work here. These critical suits would not have existed had the work stopped in 2023.

In September, our board voted to add a COVID-era hospital fraud lawsuit. We will bring you the devastating story of the plaintiff and her late daughter very soon.

As we continue to grow, we will add more strategic lawsuits and partner with other attorneys, like Nicole Pearson, or any attorney who is a good fit with a strategic suit that will benefit everyone in California.

We have built up a great set of part-time contractors and the team is running more smoothly than ever. We recently joined forces with Laura Sextro, of the Unity Project. She is winding up Unity, and has joined our board to help us with strategy. She has also generously shared the Unity email list, allowing us to reach twice as many people. She is also a contractor for Free Now Foundation.

Another special mention goes to our new Treasurer, Kim Leonoudakis, who has re-organized our accounting department and in her words, “fired me from accounting.” I’m beyond grateful.

I’m proud to say that in the past couple years, I achieved substantially more recovery from my 1996 vaccine injury, and proved to myself over the past 5+ years of volunteering that I can do this work, even if it’s not during a regular 9 to 5 day. I just had to stop judging myself against that traditional workday standard.

I’m now directly managing the organization for the first time, without an executive director or equivalent, and I love it. For the first time, I’m taking a stipend.

I love doing this medical freedom work, and deeply appreciate every single person who has supported it, both inside and outside our organization. You have made us the leading medical freedom law non-profit in California.

I can’t wait to get the court decisions that will give us durable protection for our medical freedom, civil rights and bodily autonomy. I want California children to go to school safely again.

Medical freedom legal work is a worthy cause, and now that you know what it’s taken to keep this work going, you understand how deeply I personally value your trust in me and Free Now Foundation.

Let’s keep it going until parents call the shots again, in California and beyond!

P.S. There were so many who stepped up to help the Chapter and in the early days of Free Now Foundation. I have left out many names. If you’d like your name added in a second version of this article, please reach out!

P.P.S. This is my opinion as one of the few who had a front row seat to this history. Others may have different opinions.