2020: Can be Arrested for Refusing to Wear a Mask – 2024: Student Protesters Face Criminal Charges for Wearing a Mask
Total Views : 47
Left image source. Man forced to wear mask in protest. Right image source. Student compared to KKK for wearing mask.
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
In yet another insane example of how “free speech” is a myth and only defined by what side of whatever political debate you are on that is dominating the news of the day, Pro-Palestinian student protesters faced criminal charges in Ohio this week for wearing face masks during the protest.
This is happening just 4 years after people were arrested in 2020 during the fake COVID pandemic for REFUSING to wear face masks in anti-lockdown protests.
In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine issued a statewide mask order in 2020 requiring everyone in Ohio to wear a face mask in public.
Governor DeWine Issues Statewide Mask Order, Travel Warning
Governor DeWine announced that beginning on Thursday, July 23, at 6:00 p.m., a statewide mask mandate will go into effect for citizens living in all 88 Ohio counties.
All individuals in Ohio must wear facial coverings in public at all times when:
- At an indoor location that is not a residence
- Outdoors, but unable to maintain six-foot social distance from people who are not household members
- Waiting for, riding, driving, or operating public transportation, such as a taxi, a car service, or a private car used for ride-sharing.
After issuing this order, a woman was tased and arrested for criminal trespassing for not wearing a mask during an outdoor school football game.
Woman tasered after refusing to wear face mask at Ohio school football game
An Ohio woman was tasered and forcibly removed from a middle school football game on Wednesday evening after refusing to wear a face mask.
A video of the incident, which garnered over 440,000 views on Facebook, shows school resource officer Chris Smith in a heated exchange with a fan in the stands of Logan High School Stadium.
Smith reportedly asked the woman to wear a face mask, but she refused claiming she has asthma, according to a statement from the Logan Police Department.
The exchange escalated when the woman, who was later identified by the Logan Police Department as Alecia Kitts, apparently refused to follow Smith’s instructions and started to yell.
“Get off of me! I will not put my hands behind my back. I’m not criminally doing nothing wrong!” Kitts can be heard yelling in the video.
After refusing to put her hands behind her back, the officer can be seen tasering her in the back and then handcuffing her, before escorting her out of the arena. (Source.)
Fast forward to almost 4 years later, and Governor DeWine’s Attorney General, Dave Yost, is trying to bring up criminal charges against two peaceful pro-Palestinian student protesters at Xavier University who were wearing masks, citing an old 1953 law designed to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members for covering their faces.
Pro-Palestinian Protesters Slapped with Felony Charges for Wearing Masks Outside Xavier Commencement
The 1953 “anti-disguise” law was written to curb the KKK. Now, Attorney General Dave Yost is using the law to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters.
Two pro-Palestinian protesters are facing felony charges for attempting to demonstrate on Xavier University’s campus just hours before a commencement ceremony over the weekend.
On Saturday, May 11, Sophia “Soup” Dempsey, an XU student, and XU alum Julia Lankisch, both 22, were arrested by campus police around 7:30 a.m. outside the Cintas Center where a graduation commencement was set to begin a few hours later.
“They were holding a Palestinian flag by this statue, and that was about it,” said Andrew Zolides, an XU professor who also leads Take it On, a university program for civic engagement. “But they weren’t making any noise. They were just standing, both kind of holding the flag.”
Zolides told CityBeat that Dempsey and Lankisch, the only two protesters there, were approached by campus police within 15 minutes of starting their demonstration. Zolides said he immediately walked over to the scene to offer help.
“I was about 30 or so yards away — because I wasn’t a part of the protest; I wasn’t organizing; it was them. By the time I got there, they were under arrest,” he said. “Probably from police approaching to being arrested, I would say was probably 60 seconds. Maybe.”
Dempsey and Lankisch were booked in the Hamilton County Justice Center on Saturday and each charged with trespassing and “conspiracy while wearing a disguise,” a felony charge for wearing medical face masks while protesting.
If the latter charge seems strange, that’s because it is. The Ohio law was created in 1953 in response to ongoing violence by the Ku Klux Klan, saying it is a felony to commit a crime, including misdemeanors, with two or more people “while wearing white caps, masks or other disguise,” according to Ohio Revised Code 3761.12.
Ohio is one of 15 states with such anti-mask laws still on the books, according to the Free Speech Center at East Tennessee State University. (Source.)
I wonder if any AGs will bring similar criminal charges against the masked Zionist protesters?
Unmasking counterprotesters who attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment
Whatever remnants of the First Amendment that still exist are now in serious danger as the Zionist coalition with their mega-funding lobbyists seek to redefine the First Amendment to basically read: You a have a right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion as long as you support the Zionist cause and don’t criticize Israel.
Also this week, more GOP Zionist politicians in DC are calling for nuclear bombs to be launched against Palestinians.
GOP Rep. Greg Murphy echoes Lindsey Graham in suggesting Israel would be justified in nuking Gaza pic.twitter.com/ju3DKjxeVd
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2024
Notice how the rhetoric these Zionists use is that this is an attack on the Hamas terrorists. But not everyone protesting Israel’s war belong to Hamas, which is actually the ruling political party in Gaza, as it was only members of its military branch who carried out the attacks.
It would be same as some country calling for a nuclear attack against Americans in the United States to pay back for the crimes of the CIA.
And as these Zionist Evangelical Christians cry out to launch nuclear bombs against the Palestinians, the suffering of native Christians in the Palestinian territories continues to be ignored.
A reader sent me this video about the Armenian Christians living in Palestine. I had not realized that Armenia was the first country in the 4th Century (301 AD) to adopt Christianity as their state religion, even before the Roman Emperor Constantine did the same in 325 AD, before watching this video.