Mayor of Los Angeles Proposes Banning Masks at Protests

Now that North Carolina is close to passing a ban on public masks (yes, in includes an exemption for wearing certain masks to prevent the spread of infection, but excludes other types of masks some people use to prevent covid, and wearing masks to cope with allergies or air pollution would be illegal under the proposed law), and the governor of New York proposed banning masks on subways, a few days ago the Mayor of Los Angeles proposed banning masks at protests.

As soon as I found out about the North Carolina bill, I knew it could happen here in California too, but many other people were saying it wouldn’t since California has more people who use masks in public to prevent covid than any other state.

Now some people are saying, oh, the mayor of Los Angeles only wants to ban masks at protests. First, we all have a right to protest in public, and making it dangerous to do so by forcing exposure to a virus that’s currently surging through California and carries a 10% risk of causing long-term illness per infection, not to mention the greater dangers it poses to immunocompromised people, curtails that right. Second, given that the North Carolina and New York proposals go beyond protests, allowing Los Angeles to ban masks at protests would set a dangerous precedent.

This has nothing to do with public safety. People who are willing to break the laws against theft or assault are also willing to break a law against wearing masks. And sunglasses are much more effective at concealing one’s identity than a mask which leaves the eyes uncovered.

That these places are all trying to pass mask bans at the same time when there’s so little grassroots public support—very few people want it to be illegal for patients going through chemotherapy to wear masks in public for their own protection—is a sign this isn’t organic. I’m not sure who is pushing these bills behind the scene or what their motive is (though I know the motive isn’t public safety). It’s possible that their main goal is to suppress the pro-Palestinian protests by giving police a pretext to arrest protestors who aren’t committing violence or damaging property. It may be a more general effort to give police leeway to harass people of color (who are much more likely to wear masks than white people), just like stop-and-frisk policies. It might be an attempt to quell resistance against current government and business policies which support re-infecting as many people as possible with covid, though I doubt this last motive simply because banning masks brings talk of covid prevention back into the news, not something people who support mass covid infection want.

Whatever their motive, this needed to get nipped as soon as possible. If you live in the United States, even if you aren’t in North Carolina, New York, or California, tell your politicians to say no to mask bans.