ReOpen NC: A misguided protest and a selfish message in Raleigh
Moral Monday protesters once regularly marched on North Carolina’s Legislative Building demanding better teacher pay and Medicaid expansion. Now we have people who plan to protest every Tuesday against the mandatory business closures imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
You might call their movement Mortal Tuesdays, a protest that calls to mind a twisted version of New Hampshire’s state motto – “Breathe mask-free and die.” Protesters turned out for the rally on Tuesday, a few hundred, sign-toting, flag-waving, horn-honking people declaring their opposition to the “tyranny” of Gov. Roy Cooper, whose stay-at-home order has made him guilty of saving lives.
The protest, dubbed Reopen NC, is part of a national drive to lift stay-at-home orders that have kept many businesses closed and caused a huge increase in unemployment. The restlessness is understandable. The protests are not.
If states simply “reopen,” their economies will not be instantly restored. People will be reluctant to gather in groups from arenas to restaurants. At the same time, COVID-19 infections will spike and another round of stay-at-home orders will come. States can reopen by degrees as COVID-19 testing shows a lesser risk, but a full return to a vibrant economy may not come until treatments or a vaccine can provide confidence that it is safe to resume all activity.
Nonetheless, the protesters, egged on by Internet conspiracy theorists, right-wing groups and President Trump came out at 11 a.m. They declared their freedom to assemble – social distancing be damned – and so they did, gathering in a mostly shuttered downtown and threatening their own and others’ health.
A counter-protester, a nurse, wore a personal protection gown on which she printed a message: “Rally together, die alone.” The protesters circled the Capitol, rebels against health-safety rules passing beneath a bronze solder high atop a memorial to the Confederate dead.
The group had the appearance of a Trump rally on the march, overwhelmingly white, skeptical of all authority, but accepting of the president’s self-declared perfection. But it’s Trump, not Cooper or other governors, who brought the nation to this pass.
The reason the virus has run rampant in the U.S. is because the president squandered a month of preparation before sounding a national alarm. Now his continuing failure to produce enough COVID-19 tests leaves governors blind to the extent of the disease and forced to default to broad stay-at-home orders. The Trump administration is compounding the economic pain by bumbling the delivery of relief.
The economic losses are widespread, while the deadly effects of the disease are targeted. It disproportionately kills the elderly and the poor, people who live and work in close quarters, who still take public transportation and have long lacked adequate medical care that now leaves them more vulnerable. That is a pattern not lost on the protesters and their sympathizers, though not directly expressed. They think they can survive this “flu.” Others are on their own.
For all that, there was good news Tuesday. The protest was small, a few hundred turned out in a state of 10 million. The great majority of North Carolinians still support the scientists and their government leaders who are urging restraint. They are committed to common sacrifice and mutual care. And they, in their great absence Tuesday, support the hope that the people of this state and the United States will prevail in this together, despite those who are noisily deserting from the common effort.
Barnett: 919-829-4512, nbarnett@newsobserver.com
