Republican supporters of the ban said it would help police crack down on protesters who wear masks
House Bill 237 would ban everyone, not just protesters, from wearing masks in public for medical reasons if it becomes law. It passed 30-15, with every Republican in favor and every Democrat opposed.
I feel this is the first of many laws like this. I haven’t felt this deeply crushed, hopeless, and afraid for a very long time. It’s hard to keep going when your life is so small and everyone in power is bent on making it even smaller. I don’t know how I will do it, and sometimes I wish I wouldn’t keep trying.
It helps to read history. People have persevered under way, way more brutal regimes than this. And won. Before the 1917 revolution people operated under the Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police, who could disappear and torture you for any reason whatsoever. Striking workers were massacred by the hundreds. And still people organized. They persevered. And they won.