Nearly 100 people assembled in front of the Idaho state capitol on Saturday in order to protest mask mandates and covid restrictions.
What We Know:
- The ring-wing protestors gathered at the state capitol and held a rally where several people, including children, were seen burning protective face masks. The protestors say that covid restrictions are a violation of their personal freedoms. Despite this, Idaho’s Republican Gov. Brad Little never introduced a statewide mask mandate, but seven counties and 11 cities do have mandates in place.
A child says “here fire, you hungry? here’s another mask”
A mask burning rally in boise, Idaho pic.twitter.com/MqNnaEKBP0
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) March 6, 2021
- The Idaho Capitol rally was one of several held across the state on Saturday. At one rally in Rexburg, state Rep. Ronald Nate shared photos of the event, calling mask mandates “the opposite of freedom”. Darr Moon, a conservative activist and husband of Republican state Rep. Dorothy Moon, said that covid restrictions aren’t needed because Idaho is mostly rural. “The Covid numbers are very low. We’ve flattened the curve a long time ago and people want to go back to work, they want to have a normal life,” said Moon.
- Experts warn that dismissing these kinds of rallies as fringe examples would be a mistake, similar to the signs leading up to the riots at the U.S. Capitol in January. “It’s hard to have a functioning democracy if we don’t live in the same shared reality, and that’s one reason why spreading conspiracy theories has been so damaging and such a useful tool for the far right,” said Lindsay Schubiner, the program director at Western States Center.
According to Johns Hopkins, over 170,000 Idaho residents have been infected with covid since the beginning of the pandemic while almost 1,900 have died. To date, the United States has suffered over half a million coronavirus deaths.
