Across the United States, right-wing legislators are targeting protesters who oppose the genocide in Palestine by resurrecting laws against wearing face masks in public. In North Carolina, the Republican-backed “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals Bill” was approved by the state Senate last week and headed to the state House this week. Fresh anti-mask efforts are also underway in Ohio, Texas and Florida. These laws threaten to effectively criminalize anyone attempting to protect themselves — whether from political repression or airborne illness.
The North Carolina law would expand the state’s existing anti-masking law by removing the exception for public health. That means people could be prosecuted for protecting themselves from COVID — and of course, implicitly, it means that police will have another excuse to target Black and Brown people, poor people and activists.
And, while it can already be unsafe for disabled and immunocompromised people to participate in public demonstrations, this change would essentially criminalize the ability for people with escalated COVID risk to go out in public at all. “This bill also threatens the lives of many who are disabled and living with chronic illness,” said Quisha Mallette, an attorney with the North Carolina Justice Center, at a public hearing on the bill last week. “If I were not permitted to wear a mask in public it would greatly limit which spaces I could visit. For me this is an access issue.”
In addition to donning masks for COVID safety, many Palestine solidarity protesters also mask to avoid doxxing and surveillance.
Democratic North Carolina Senator Natasha Marcus, speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday, questioned whether Republicans were truly worried about masked mobs. “Or is this, more likely, a desire to score some political points with the anti-mask crowd during an election year, at the expense of vulnerable people?”
Ironically, many anti-mask laws were originally passed to discourage the KKK from terrorizing people while........