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MORE MASS POLITICAL GATHERINGS AMID CONTINUING SHUTDOWNS: On Monday, Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, who is hoping to become Joe Biden’s running mate, tweeted her approval of a mass rally in West Hollywood on Sunday known as the “All Black Lives Matter” march, put on by the Black LGBTQ+ Activists for Change. “This isn’t just a moment — it’s a movement,” Harris tweeted about the estimated 30,000 people who showed up.
The rally followed a huge event in New York Sunday known as “Brooklyn Liberation,” billed as “An action for black trans lives.” In addition to their general themes, what both events had in common was that they were mass gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic. Although many participants in Brooklyn wore masks, distancing was clearly not practiced, and the gathering represented another risk of spreading the virus in the world epicenter of the disease.
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But get this: The day after the “Brooklyn Liberation” rally, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo met the press to announce that “gatherings of up to 25 people will be allowed in Phase Three of reopening, up from the limit of 10.” “People should follow the guidelines because the guidelines have been working,” Cuomo said. Of course, the Brooklyn gathering smashed that guideline to pieces, and authorities did nothing.
Here’s what seemed particularly crazy. Not long after the Brooklyn event, with tens of thousands of people and no police effort to enforce safety measures, city workers welded shut a playground in nearby Williamsburg to keep children from playing.
“City playgrounds have been closed by state order since April 1,” the New York Post reported, “when Gov. Cuomo took the option out of the hands of Mayor Bill de Blasio as the pandemic ran rampant through New York. At the time, the governor’s office said they took the step to prevent the gathering crowds where the virus, which has killed over 100,000 people in the U.S. over the past few months, could spread.”
Meanwhile, experts still tout contact tracing as a key weapon against further spread of coronavirus. But the New York news organization The City reported that New York’s tracing program has already been politicized. “The hundreds of contact tracing workers hired by the city under de Blasio’s new ‘test and trace’ campaign have been instructed not to ask anyone who’s tested positive for COVID-19 whether they recently attended a demonstration,” The City reported. “‘No person will be asked if they attended a protest,’ Avery Cohen, a spokesperson for de Blasio, wrote.”
Is it any wonder that many have no faith at all in the wisdom, fairness, and effectiveness of the authorities’ efforts to control coronavirus?
