Utahns speak out against masks at ‘Rally for Liberty’ in Orem and during county commissioner’s town hall
Ammon Bundy, who led the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, speaks during the "Rally for Liberty" held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Bethany, last name withheld, of Provo, claps after a speaker’s remarks during the "Rally for Liberty" held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Jason Preston, of Lehi, records Ammon Bundy as he speaks during the "Rally for Liberty" held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Shawna Cox, of Kanab, speaks during the "Rally for Liberty" held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Ammon Bundy, who led the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, poses for photos with attendees after the "Rally for Liberty" held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Stephanie Grant, left, and Tiffany Barker, both of Lehi, talk with each other before the "Rally for Liberty" held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Brand Thornton, a spiritually-ordained Messianic rabbi, uses a Shofar at the start of the Rally for Liberty held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
A sign is displayed as attendees listen to a speaker during the Rally for Liberty held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Amberli Nelson, of Salem, speaks during the Rally for Liberty held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Attendees write down the URL of a website shared by a speaker during the Rally for Liberty held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Attendees hold signs as they and others listen to a speaker during the Rally for Liberty held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Literature from the Utah Central Committee is passed out to attendees during the Rally for Liberty held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
An attendee holds a sign as he and others listen to a speaker during the Rally for Liberty held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Attendees clap as Ammon Bundy takes the stage during the Rally for Liberty held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
Ammon Bundy, who led the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, talks with attendees after the Rally for Liberty held at Orem City Center Park on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald
A few hundred Utahns huddled around the amphitheater at the Orem City Center Park on Wednesday evening waving American flags, holding signs with slogans like “Don’t Mask Our Kids” and “COVID 1984” and, noticeably, not wearing masks or face coverings during a rally against government mask mandates.
The “Rally for Liberty” in Utah County featured a number of prominent speakers, including Ammon Bundy and Shawna Cox, anti-government activists who were part of an armed militia that took over an Oregon wildlife refuge in 2016, who called mask requirements unconstitutional and claimed masks are harmful to adults and children.
Bundy, clutching a microphone and wearing faded leather boots and a chocolate brown cowboy hat, told the crowd that solidarity was the way to stand up to government mandates, such as the statewide mandate for public K-12 schools this fall.
“Plan on standing and uniting together, because that is what it will come down to,” he said. “It will come down to each one of us saying ‘no.’ And then as the powers come to come and force us in whatever we’re saying no to, then our neighbors will come around us and defend us and defend each other. That’s exactly what happened at the Bundy Ranch, that’s what must happen all over the United States and all over the country if we are to preserve liberty.”
Bundy asked the crowd, which ranged from elderly couples to parents with their toddlers and infants, a question: Who has the right to rule you?
“No one!” shouted one woman. “I do!” yelled another. “God!” another person said.
“It is not about a mask,” Bundy said. “It is not about a virus. It is about, whose right is it to rule? Who has the right to rule your life? Your time, your labor? Who has the right to control your body?
“We are entering the greatest battle to defend individual rights that has ever been waged before,” he continued. “If we lose this battle, then we and our children will be plunged into the depths of darkness for many generations. This darkness will be more severe than ever before.”
Salem resident Amberli Nelson, who told the rally attendees she was a mother of seven, called the statewide mask mandate for K-12 schools an “unprecedented usurping” and an abuse of Utah Gov. Gary Herbert’s executive powers, adding that she wanted to “unmask the truth about masks and the many other ways the government in the state of Utah is masking the truth.”
“The time has come to unmask ourselves, unmask our voices, and unmask our righteous rage at the unlawful acts of tyranny that are being hurled at us daily, dressed up with official-sounding titles such as ‘mandates,’ ” Nelson said over the cheering crowd.
Nelson said wearing masks should “always and only be a choice” and “never an act of compulsion by mandate,” calling the school mandate a “social experiment” to see which residents would comply with government orders.
“Remember we did not hire our representatives and elected officials to protect our health,” she said. “We hired them to protect our liberties. It’s our job to protect our health, and it’s still our right to choose how and when and where.”
Enoch Moore, a member of Defending Utah, an organization that “exposes the truth regardless of its popularity” and “promot(es) liberty while exposing shills and fake friends of freedom,” encouraged parents to pull their kids out of public school if possible and, if unable to, to tell their kids to ignore the mask mandate.
“Refuse all testing,” Moore told the crowd. Refuse to get your temperature taken. Refuse to wear a mask of any kind. Refuse anything that could be classified as medical treatment (to which) they did not consent. Teach your children not to consent, because they are following the law when they don’t consent. And make sure they have like-minded friends at school, because they will try to turn the children against the parents.”
At the same time Bundy was telling the audience about the 2016 armed standoff against the federal government, Utah County Commissioner Bill Lee was holding a virtual town hall with residents who had questions or concerns about the school mask requirement.
Lee, who on July 15 requested the commission consider asking the governor to give the county “compassionate exemption from the one-size-fits-all mask mandate in Utah County’s public schools” but later withdrew his request, told a dozen town hall attendees that he nixed the request because his concerns were addressed in exemptions clarified in a health order issued by the Utah Department of Health on July 17.
“I wasn’t attacking necessarily the full exemption to masks, because that’s not an area that was even really on the table for discussion,” Lee said. “That’s going to be at the governor’s level and with the state health department and probably some others there. I was trying to find a way in a compromise, which is the hardest position to be in. Because I can see that, you know, no masks, full masks, were both going to be really hard to play. So I was trying to find some compromise position.”
Lee encouraged those who were concerned about masks in schools to reach out to their representatives and senators in the Utah State Legislature, adding that he supported local control and believed that decisions on masks should be left up to individual school districts.
Lee originally intended to hold the town hall at the Utah Valley Convention Center but announced Tuesday it would instead be held online. The commissioner attempted to organize a town hall with county superintendents on July 28, but it fell through when some school officials expressed concern.
Healthcare executives and infectious disease experts have repeatedly told state and Utah County officials that masks are an effective way of slowing the spread of COVID-19 and aren’t harmful for those without respiratory-related medical conditions.
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