“Unmasking Mobs and Criminals” (05/23/24)

Death Panel podcast hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant and Jules Gill-Peterson discuss the recent push by state and local governments to criminalize masking in public space, in some cases introducing new legislation to make existing anti-mask laws more severe, and take a close look at HB237, “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals,” a bill currently being debated in North Carolina that perfectly illustrates the links between covid activism, abolition, and the fight for Palestinian liberation.

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Transcript by Kendra Kline. (Kendra is currently accepting freelance transcript work — email her if you need transcripts or visit her website)

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[ Intro music ]

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 0:32

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I'm Beatrice Adler-Bolton, and today I'm here with my co-hosts, Artie Vierkant.

Artie Vierkant 1:09

Hello.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:10

And Jules Gill-Peterson.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:11

Hello.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:12

And the three of us are discussing recent attempts by state governments in the US to criminalize masking in public. Now in recent weeks, we have seen major developments in political attacks against masking and public space. There has been another loud wave of generalized anti-mask sentiment, resurgent among frankly both liberals and conservatives.

Anti-mask sentiment writ large has been promoted and allowed to flourish under the Biden pandemic response, what we named and have been talking about for years now as the sociological production of the end of the pandemic. And this has collided with preexisting regimes of carcerality in the US, as well as attempts by representatives of the state to quash, repress and silence left protest movements, which frequently employed masking during protest actions already before COVID.

This anti-mask push is not new, but with the rise of Palestinian solidarity encampments, as we've already referenced on multiple episodes over the last few weeks, this antagonism to masking has really come to a head. And it's not just that people are talking about it more all of the sudden, it's that we're seeing coordinated attempts by the state to end pandemic exceptions allowing masking in public, both to deal with protest movements that they don't like, further criminalize people participating, and to, in effect, leverage state law to place a chilling effect on masking now and future masking in the event of a second new pandemic.

And of course, today we're going to be talking about this wave of anti-mask sentiment, including states like Ohio using preexisting anti mask laws, originally intended to target the KKK, against masked activists, as well as looking at the renewed antagonism to masking that has flourished in op ed pages and in the media just over the last few weeks.

So we're going to be looking in depth specifically at North Carolina's bill HB 237, aproposed bill currently working its way through the North Carolina State Legislature, titled Unmasking Mobs and Criminals. This bill passed in the North Carolina State Senate last week, but as of this recording, it has yet to become law. It is expected to be debated again in the North Carolina House of Representatives possibly as early as this Thursday, so today, if you're listening to this the day that this episode comes out.

Without getting into too much detail upfront, which we're going to get into a little later in the episode, as of this recording the text of HB 237, Unmasking Mobs and Criminals, would alter a preexisting North Carolina anti-masking law, to remove the public health exception to the law, effectively making it illegal to wear a face mask in public space.

But it would also make charges more severe for any actions tried under the criminal legal system as a crime that were done while wearing a mask, and includes other provisions that attack both left protests generally and target the state's ability to put future public health protections in place, whether for this pandemic or a future pandemic. So there's a lot to get into today. But let's start with a broader look at the context for some of these attacks on masking.

Artie Vierkant 3:58

Yeah. So when we talk about liberals and conservatives alike handwringing about this, I think it's important to start with kind of the media framing too, as you mentioned, which is we're talking of course about a few things we've referenced in the middle of other conversations over the last few weeks, like this Lee Fang tweet from April 24, which read, "Get a hair cut, dress bland and non threatening, and for the love of God, take off the COVID mask if you're attending a pro-Palestine demonstration. That's the bare minimum, unless you're doing it to appeal to in group fashion, not public persuasion."

Image description: April 24th tweet by Lee Fang reading “Get a haircut, dress bland and non-threatening and for the love of god take off the COVID mask if you're attending a pro-Palestine demonstration. That's the bare minimum. Unless you're doing it to appeal to in-group fashion, not public persuasion.”

Or of course from another perspective, the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt -- pro-Zionist group ADL -- tweeting in response to the Palestine Solidarity encampments, that masking in public space should be banned, "Outlaw full face masks on campus. Masks that cover the entire face have no bearing on COVID or free speech and should be banned on all college campuses effective immediately."

Also saying of this in a video posted online, complaining about the Columbia encampment specifically, "This isn't Fallujah, this is Morningside Heights." [Beatrice and Jules groaning]

Image description: April 22nd tweet by Jonathan Greenblatt reading “Second, outlaw full-face masks on campus. Masks that cover the entire face have no bearing on Covid or free speech and should be banned on all college campuses effective immediately.”

So, that's some of the stuff that we're dealing with in terms of the sort of broader social context. But in terms of the context of states, I think this is really important, something that Bea mentioned, we're obviously going to be talking in depth about North Carolina's law, but I think it is really important to highlight that this is obviously not a phenomenon located exclusively in North Carolina.

For example, just in the last few weeks, in Ohio, State Attorney General Dave Yost sent a letter some weeks ago to 14 public universities in the state, threatening to charge student encampments with a felony under Ohio Code Section 3761.12, which is called Prohibition against conspiracy while wearing disguise, a part of the Ohio State law enacted prior to the pandemic. Students arrested for speaking out on Palestine at the University of Florida had a number of charges thrown against them, but one of them was for "wearing masks in public." When UT Austin in Texas called state troopers on a solidarity encampment, among the justifications for that was that the encampment was breaking university policy by wearing face masks "to obstruct law enforcement."

And then of course, there's North Carolina, which we'll be talking about today. But first, it's important to note, the North Carolina law we'll be talking about today, as well as the Ohio law that we mentioned, are all pre-existing laws from before the pandemic, but getting this renewed push now, but that is really important to keep in mind.

So while Ohio and North Carolina are two of the States actively using these laws against protesters, there are 18 states and Washington DC overall that have some type of anti-mask law. So here's a rundown from one nonprofit group quote,

Several states make it an offense to wear a mask if one commits a crime or intends to commit a crime. These are California, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Florida and Washington DC. In some states, anti-mask laws require the wearer intend to deprive another person of their constitutional rights. These are Connecticut, Delaware and New Mexico.

They continue,

Importantly in Washington, DC, North Dakota, Florida and Oklahoma, in addition to making it an offense to wear a face covering when committing a crime, it is an offense to wear a mask with the intent to intimidate or harass another person. In North Dakota and Oklahoma, that is punishable by up to a year in jail. In Washington DC, up to 180 days in jail, and in Florida, up to 60 days in jail.

They then note, and I think this is the really important part,

Intimidation and harassment are often subjective, making these provisions ripe for abuse by authorities, whether that involves racial profiling, or targeting a demonstrator who may be engaged in a strongly worded protest.

And so I think that last part encapsulates some at least of what we'll probably be talking about over the course of this episode.

But these are some of the states that have pre-existing laws. I'll note also, of course, that New York and this is -- you know, I know that we have a lot of listeners in New York and kind of the surrounding area, so I will say -- I want to flag this specifically for everybody listening from there, New York until spring 2020 -- until about May, end of May 2020 -- also had a long standing anti-mask law, which was repealed early in the pandemic.

So that I remember actually very distinctly, there was a old headline I remember that I dug up to find this. So this is from New York 1, from May 28th, 2020, "It took a pandemic to take down this 200 year old law."

So that was repealed in early 2020. However, there is a renewed push to get this law reenacted. There is, for example, the inveterate cranks at the New York Post published a big article pushing for this, they quote Staten Island Assemblymember Michael Reilly saying, "While the right to peaceful assembly and free speech are core to our national values, the deceptive use of masks and other facial covering pose a significant risk to public safety."

Image description: New York Post headline from May 4, 2024 reading “Ban on ‘deceptive’ mask wearing pushed after violent campus takeovers by cloaked agitators”

So as we talk about this law in North Carolina, I think this is really important to keep in mind, this law is one that is being debated further this week, possibly today as of when you're hearing this recording, as Bea mentioned at the top, but it seems likely that we will see more pushes for things like this to even take, as in the case of North Carolina, old laws and reinforce them or add new provisions to make them more draconian, to further outlaw masking in public space.

And I think before we sort of get into some of the specifics of what is being proposed by the North Carolina legislature, I think it's just really important also to mention, Biden hasn't said anything about this, possibly to no one's surprise. But just I think it's very important to note, Biden hasn't said anything about this.

Mandy Cohen, the new Director of the CDC, you know, the CDC itself hasn't said anything about this, pushing back on it. Mandy Cohen, her last job before she became the new CDC director was she was the health secretary of North Carolina. So you know, it is conspicuous that she has not said anything. It's important to push not only at the state and local level, but also at the federal level because, you know, again, as Bea alluded to through that reference to the sociological production of the end of the pandemic, the Biden administration really owns this.

And I think we'll probably make that point again. I want to actually call out right from the top, not only obviously is there the whole -- I would recommend people who haven't listened to it before maybe or haven't listened in a while, go back and listen, we have an episode called How Liberals Killed Masking from a while back that is completely about how the Biden administration's actions through 2021 specifically, led to a lot of states dropping their mask mandates really prematurely.

North Carolina was one of those. North Carolina dropped their mask mandate on May 14th, 2021.

That is just one day. It was one of only a couple of states that dropped their mask mandates just a day after the CDC made their big spring 2021 announcement that they were going to drop the masking recommendations which they then, as we talk about at length in that episode, which they then tried to sort of reverse a couple of months later, but by that point, so much of the damage was already done.

And then of course, just as a final note, this is also kind of the problem with -- part of the reason Biden hasn't said anything, part of the reason that Cohen hasn't said anything, is that we have seen for a very, very long time, the Biden administration has taken the approach to masking and the pandemic that is almost akin to what conservatives argue about states rights and abortion and things like that, which is saying that masking is something that should be completely up to the state. So here is just, as a sort of final thing to end my large block of exposition up at the front --

-- So for example, here is former White House COVID Response Coordinator, Ashish Jha, speaking on ABC News' This Week on July 17th, 2022, just two months into his time with the Biden administration and fully two years ago, saying that it should be up to the states

Clipped Audio, Martha Raddatz, ABC News This Week July 17 2022 12:28

LA County announced this week that if cases continue on the same trajectory, they will have an indoor mask mandate, it looks likely that that will happen. I assume that's something you support, should should other states look at this?

Clipped Audio, Ashish Jha 12:42

Yeah, my view on this has been -- for really for two years, well before I came into this current role, my view on this has been very clear, which is local jurisdictions - cities, counties, states - should make decisions about mask mandates, because communities are different, and their patterns of transmission are different.

Artie Vierkant 13:00

He's talking about 2020, by the way, "really for two years, well before I came into this current role," -- like two years before [that statement] would be 2020. So yeah, again, Biden administration definitely owns this. But also there's a very real political reality of the specifics of the situation that's going on in these states, including North Carolina.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 13:18

Well, thank you so much for putting out all of that overview, Artie. I think it's so important, and I'm really glad that you mentioned the New York law in particular, because I had a story that I wanted to bring to the show today of when that New York anti-mask law was used against me in 2011, during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

So back in 2011, I think Occupy Wall Street had been going for maybe three days at that point, there were concurrent protests that were going on at Cooper Union, my undergrad, and back then I was immunocompromised. And I had just started masking on the subways maybe 18 months before that, and I had already received harassment from the police on the subways, particularly standing on the platform in Union Square.

And so I was aware that there was an anti-mask ordinance in New York City. And the reason why I had gotten away with wearing a mask on the subway prior to that is that I was issued a summons once and I went to court and ultimately it turned out that you have to have two people or more congregating together for that charge to apply, so it was dismissed.

And then 18 months later, at Occupy Wall Street, I'm masking at Occupy Wall Street because this is like a thousand people together in Zuccotti Park, you know, folks are sick, it's been raining, it's cold. Everyone has been camping out for a couple of days at this point. I'm not interested in getting sick, so I'm masking at the protests. I ultimately get pulled out of a group of people because we were the masked ones in the crowd. So it was myself, it was a bunch of other people wearing bandanas. I think I was the only one in a medical mask and ultimately ended up kind of slipping away from the NYPD. But a lot of those people ended up being charged.

And it turns out that law that was used against us is from the 1840s, and it got started and was put in place in New York specifically because a group of tenant farmers had revolted against the police, and put themselves up in costumes and attacked the police back in the 1840s.

And ultimately, this law has been used multiple times in New York state history. There were a number of incidents in the 90s. But it has been exclusively used on protests. And that's a really important context, because I know a lot of the focus on this has been around, in North Carolina, for example, that they're going to make masking for medical reasons illegal.

And that's definitely important to focus on. But what I think is really central and that folks who give a shit about COVID need to be thinking about very deeply is the fact that whatever "health and safety," public health consequences come from these changes, the intent is both to have a chilling effect on masking writ large, for sure, but it is to be able to punish and chill participation in protests that's going on right now. And that is specifically why we're seeing these laws right now.

Jules Gill-Peterson 16:13

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I'm so glad that both of you have taken the time to give this context upfront. Because I do think that the longer historical arc just provides like a little, a little window into the stakes of the politics here. And yeah, exactly why a kind of solidarity across health concerns into other political concerns is so important.

Because yeah, we're dealing with, as you've both been talking about, several centuries' worth of policing, and mostly state and local laws interacting with both the sociological production of the end of the pandemic, and especially police and state repression of protests movements, you know, Palestine solidarity movements, but certainly movements for Black freedom over the past four years, as well. And it just -- it seems like really clarifying to know that part of what this history involves is that there already were all of these laws.

So we can think of the proposals to restore laws or the proposals to amend existing laws as sort of an attempt by different states to return to what, from the perspective of the state or the police, has been the status quo in some cases for more than a century. And so that in part, I think, puts in context, why it's so worth having this political fight, and taking the opening here that masking has provided. And that, just thinking specifically at the level of mechanics, right, that what you're -- what you were just talking about, Bea, and really the origin of this style of policing is the creation of status offenses of certain kinds of appearance in public that are criminal, just like passively criminal.

So the criminalization of public presence being something that was slowly constructed over the 19th century, and it was primarily constructed, and no one will be surprised to hear, for racist purposes, and specifically to suppress any kind of leftist political movement, or resistance to state violence.

And over time, this kind of status policing has really expanded the reach of the police and has allowed the state to police a whole bunch of things that don't really logically flow from those original rationales. Like it's not germane to this conversation, but in case people find it interesting, the origin of the criminalization of crossdressing actually comes out of the same legal infrastructure. We could talk about the criminalization of being unhoused, or of sex work, or of just being in public depending on race in different parts of the country.

So there is this kind of infrastructure that relies on the totally subjective, arbitrary exercise of police power on the street. And that, you know, if we see that as the root and the basic, basic unit here, the thing that's really at stake, I think it reminds us of what it is that we need to be worried about, and how it can be applied. I think you're so right. It's like wearing a mask to reduce the spread of viruses is only one of many kinds of targets here of state power.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 19:26

Absolutely. And it's important to sort of think about what happened in terms of that process of me being pulled out of the crowd in 2011. Because literally, what I felt and how I realized it was happening was I started being pulled backward because a police officer was grabbing my right arm and pulling me backward, saying, "Why are you in a mask? No one is hiding their face for any good reason. Anyone wearing a mask is up to no good."

And they were specifically going through the crowd and grabbing people and physically dragging them out if they were wearing any type of face covering, just to put them aside and start going through, you know, seizing their wallet, looking them up for any outstanding warrants, issuing tickets and summons.

And while I was the only person there who got pulled out who was in a medical mask, for example, it didn't really matter because the chilling effect is very real and incredibly effective. I had a double chilling effect, because it meant that I didn't feel safe going back to the protest, both in terms of masking and covering my face and protecting myself from getting sick, and also, I just felt that I was going to be scooped up by the NYPD again, and I was pushing my luck to go back in a mask. But then if I went back not in a mask, I'm risking getting sick, I'm immunocompromised, right.

But even for the folks who are not sort of dealing with that duel, do I get sick/do I not, and the decision to unmask is maybe a little bit easier, this is now a burden on them for having been there in a mask in the first place, right? They've got a court appearance, they might be from out of town, and they have to come back to New York financially to appear for that summons in order to not end up with a warrant. They might have a fine. And so ultimately, the point of many of these laws is to really harass, suppress, and physically repress the attendance at protests, right.

And what happened after the NYPD started pulling them out of the crowd for masking is that fewer people started showing up to Zuccotti Park and it got a lot smaller. Literally the material effects of these laws are tangibly visible in attendance at these actions. And it's absolutely a time for folks who care about COVID to be showing up to Palestine actions in masks and being a part of that and making these movements bigger, because I think the real message that has to be sent is the fact that these laws are not going to fucking intimidate us.

Artie Vierkant 21:49

Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's a really good lesson to your story from back in 2011, especially because I'm sure that a lot of people will have had similar experiences, even from other protests or other organizing actions in different contexts over just the last couple of years, will have experienced those types of chilling effects that you're talking about where especially, you know, I think that, for instance, that's one of the reasons I think it's so amazing that by and large, so many of the pro Palestine demonstrations and actions are masked, right, because that's something that we've been talking about trying to find solidarity with between communities and making sure that it's acknowledged that COVID is still a problem, for a long time. But I'm sure that a lot of people will relate to exactly those situations that you're talking about, except for your story's from 2011, right, because you've been immunocompromised for a very long time.

But I think to sort of transition into talking about HB 237, Unmasking Mobs and Criminals specifically, to sort of preface maybe some of what we'll speak on about this, what is really interesting about sort of every portion of this short bill is that it's this perfect distillation I think of how so many of these issues that we talk about all the time, are intrinsically interconnected, whether it's masking for COVID, or masking for OpSec reasons, or more specifically, I think the connections that we have been trying to articulate over and over again, really over the last many years, between COVID advocacy and abolition, health and disability politics and policing, right? It's just kind of this perfect distillation of why these issues are all interconnected in the first place.

And so we'll be getting into that. Another thing I think, just to mention, because both of you were talking about status offenses, as Jules called them, this is also sort of happening on a continuum alongside other things that we've talked about on the show just really recently, things like involuntary hospitalization laws that are being pushed to expand in New York under Mayor Eric Adams, and under the governor there, Kathy Hochul.

Or, for example, mask off at the door policies, also an Eric Adams special, which we talked about at length in COVID Year Four, for example. So in any case, we're going to spend kind of the middle of this episode just going through sort of step by step what the main things are that this bill would do.

Again, this is a North Carolina state bill that is -- as Bea mentioned, it already passed in the Senate, it's going to be heard in the House this week. It may change, but we're talking about the bill text as it currently exists, as of the time of recording.

And I would also like to say as we start to get into this, I just want to shout out Charlotte Mask Bloc [and Triangle Mask Bloc], who alongside some others certainly, have been doing a lot of really good work just kind of keeping people informed on where this bill stands, what it does, and doing things like live tweeting legislative sessions where it's talked about. You love to see it. You love to see mask blocs doing that work.

Anyway, without further ado, H237, Unmasking Mobs and Criminals. What does it do? I think the official working title actually says it all, so I'm going to read that. So this is direct from the bill text. It's called Unmasking Mobs and Criminals, but the actual title is the following:

A bill to be entitled, An act to repeal the physical health and safety of others exemption to certain laws prohibiting wearing masks; to enhance punishment if the defendant was wearing a mask or other clothing or device to conceal or attempt to conceal the defendants identity; to prohibit gubernatorial executive orders, secretarial declarations, municipal or local government prohibitions and restrictions, or other rules or regulations by a political subdivision of this state from imposing additional limitations on religious institutions that are not applicable to businesses, nonprofit organizations, or other private entities affected by the same or similar emergency.

-- Reading like a pharmaceutical disclaimer ad now. --

-- To increase the penalty for impeding a road during a demonstration or obstructing an emergency vehicle from accessing a road at any time; and to create civil liability for a demonstration organizer of a demonstration that obstructs an emergency vehicle.

Yes, giant, giant mouthful. I promise we're gonna break down all of that. I just think literally the title, which is a mouthful, does kind of say it all, but we're gonna talk about that in more depth. So I think the best way to do this is to sort of go through the four points outlined and highlighted by the North Carolina General Assembly's legislative analysis.

This is a document -- I'll link to it in the transcript when it goes up. But they have essentially a legislative analysis and overview of what the bill does.

And there are four bullet points that are kind of the main things, and I think they actually do a very good job of encapsulating what is contained in the bill text generally, although there will be more on each that we kind of talk about. So I'll read these four points, specifically.

So it will do the following,

1. Repeal the health and safety exemption from laws prohibiting the wearing of masks in public.

2. Enhance the criminal punishment if the defendant wears a mask to conceal the defendant's identity during the commission of another crime.

3. Prevent the executive branch or local governments from distinguishing between religious institutions and other entities during an emergency.

4. Impose criminal and civil liability on individuals who obstruct emergency vehicles during demonstrations.

So let's go through these piece by piece.

One, again, repeal the health and safety exemption from certain laws prohibiting the wearing of masks in public. So that language is slightly technical. What this is saying is there is a pre-existing law, as we mentioned, that is an anti-mask law in North Carolina. It is one of these laws, like several of the others in the other states that we mentioned at the top, that was enacted originally with the sort of stated intent of targeting the KKK and other groups, although ironically, as we'll get to, there is a -- well, not ironically -- interestingly, there is a carve out for groups like the KKK.

But what this is talking about is like in some other states, North Carolina, when the pandemic started, enacted what is called a public health exception to its anti-mask statute. So in its existing anti-mask statute, there are a number of sort of carve outs, if you will, for what is an acceptable form of wearing a face mask.

The first one, for example, is like -- I won't read the legal language out, but essentially the first exception is, for example, wearing a mask during Halloween or something like that, is an exception. So that is one of them. And early in the pandemic, North Carolina added a public health exception, which is an exception for "any person wearing a mask for the purpose of ensuring the physical health or safety of the wearer or others."

And so this is one of the main things that it is trying to do, this bill, the first bullet point, if you will -- again, there are many things that it does -- but one of the central things that it has done, one of the reasons that it is referred to specifically as an anti-mask bill, even though there are also things within it that are about blocking traffic and things like that, is because of the intention to strike this provision specifically.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 29:18

Well, this is the thing that I think is really important to remember is that this is amending an existing law. And I think a lot of people have talked about this as if it's a new law that's being passed, where they're trying to actively criminalize wearing masking. They're actually trying to revert it, right, to a pre-existing state and strike those provisions. But, in effect, whether it's a new law or this removal of protections, it still achieves the same effect, which is ostensibly, it is up to the police officer's discretion whether or not you have a valid reason to be wearing a mask in public or not.

And that is ultimately what this change is trying to achieve. It's trying to no longer have essentially a blanket good faith assumption that everyone wearing a mask has a reason to wear a mask, and it's trying to return to this prior state of the only people wearing a mask have a good reason, either medical documentation that the police officer is going to demand to see, or because they're doing something suspicious.

Jules Gill-Peterson 30:21

Right. No, I agree. In the end, the mechanics of enforcement here really sort of make the rationales kind of abstract and moot. But it is just sort of a naked demonstration that if adopted, right, but more broadly, because of this broader state law, the position of the state of North Carolina is that no one has ever actually been free to wear a mask in public, right, since the original law was adopted. That's not, that's not something that people were free to do when the pandemic started.

And in fact, the legislature felt it had to create what it termed an exemption, right, so just the most negative freedom you could possibly imagine, the state was sort of setting aside its right to criminalize someone for wearing a face covering in public. And you know, that -- I just think that that's really worth dwelling on. It's a really old idea that gets brought up in all sorts of ways, but the idea that covering the face is deceptive, obviously, is a really powerful rationale for state intervention.

And so I think it also will help us make sense of the logic of exemptions in general, because the bill includes some exemptions, and there were others proposed and I -- you know, it's like those aren't immaterial, but the very idea that wearing a mask in a public space can only ever be an exemption to a criminal status or criminal act is just really like that -- that really reframes everything, right? It really, really, really reframes everything.

Artie Vierkant 31:55

Absolutely. I think that's such a -- yeah, I really like this sort of reframe of it, especially bringing it up in context of negative rights and the state's right to harass you, or commit violence on you, which they want to make sure to reiterate, I suppose, that that is something that they sort of had and want to hold on to before and going forward.

But I think where this has gotten really interesting, too, I want to bring in -- there are two things that we're going to bring in that are from discussions had among the North Carolina legislature itself. We have two clips. These are both brief clips, like one or two minutes from in the Senate specifically, while debating this bill last week. I'll note also one of the things that we're going to do in I think both the transcript and I'm not sure where else, we'll post this probably in the show notes, I'm going to put a link to the full audio of the two legislative sessions that we have.

And the reason that I'm going to do that is because obviously, you know, one, we're going to play clips from this, but I do want people to be able to hear everything in their full context if they want to. But what we sort of found quickly as we were starting to research this episode was that the North Carolina Senate does not leave up their livestreams of Senate sessions.

So you can't just kind of go on to a state archive and find the Senate conversations specifically. What you have to do is what we did, which is the day after the hearing, Bea called the -- oh my god, what's the office called?

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 33:39

North Carolina Legislative Library.

Artie Vierkant 33:41

Yeah. Bea called the North Carolina Legislative Library and requested audio of the sessions where they specifically talked about these. So we have full audio of two sessions from last week. One is the Senate -- the North Carolina State Senate Judiciary Committee, and the other is the State Senate Rules Committee, both talking about H237. And so the first clip that I'm going to play is from the Judiciary Committee meeting.

And this is a moment where -- this part that we're talking about specifically, the way that this interfaces with -- I think the way that a lot of people talk about this is interfaces with immunocompromised people and disabled people and sick people's right to space, which is definitely true, but also just in general interfaces with the right to protect yourself from COVID, regardless of what your, I suppose you could call it, "health status" is (big scare quotes on health status). But so I'm just gonna play this clip so that we can then maybe talk about this for a moment.

What you're about to hear, you're gonna hear a State Senator Batch, who is a Democrat, is the one asking questions in the clip and the first person responding is State Senator Elden Sharp "Buck" Newton -- Buck is his nickname -- who is a Republican. So Senator Buck Newton answering. So here's that clip.

Clipped Audio, NC State Senator Batch 35:06

Thank you. And Senator Newton, I appreciate your remarks. As someone who was immunocompromised during the time that I actually was receiving my cancer treatments, I would be concerned. I don't think that it's stoking the fears of individuals who walk through this world compromised through no fault of their own. I think one of the biggest concerns -- there are multiple concerns I have with the bill. Appreciate the intent, have no problem with that. Think that individuals who are trying to hide their identity in committing crimes should absolutely be prosecuted. My issue is that we are removing the specific section that gave people who are immunocompromised or people who were sick and just care about the community, someone walking around with tuberculosis, wants to wear a mask to protect everybody else, is no longer able to do that based on this bill. And that is one of the concerns that I have based on reading the actual summary that was provided by staff. I guess my question in moving forward is, what is the opposition to returning section six to what it was by law that does allow for other individuals to wear a mask for physical and health safety purposes, if in fact, you have to prove intent for a crime, then of course, the prosecutor or the law enforcement officer can determine what that intent is.

Clipped Audio, NC State Senator Buck Newton 36:28

Yeah, so the intent here is to try to prosecute folks who are trying to hide their identity. So I think that would be implicit in the -- in the charge.

Clipped Audio, NC State Senator Batch 36:38

Follow up. So what's the objection to returning -- to changing it to allow for people who are immunocompromised or people who are sick, to walk around with a mask, as the law allows right now?

Clipped Audio, NC State Senator Buck Newton 36:51

I think I think the burden would be much higher for law enforcement other way around, and we didn't have this problem before, pre-COVID. I don't think we'll have a problem now. I don't -- I don't see the point in doing it, if we're going to change anything at all, why are we here?

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 37:07

Oh my gosh. I mean, thank you to the Congressional librarian in North Carolina for mailing us the thumb drive with this audio, because to actually hear them talking about it, and be able to go back and listen again, like wait, did they really just fucking say that, has been so crucial towards developing my thinking past like shock and rage and into something a little more pointed, if you know what I mean.

But the sort of clear disdain, disregard for the fact that, for example, policing is highly racialized and incredibly fucking racist, especially in places like North Carolina, which for a long time have been reckoning with the fact that there have been Black Lives Matter protests for years, the state legislature in North Carolina has previously attempted to pass other bills and push other laws that restrict, and they have passed other bills as well and other laws, that have restricted protests in one form or another. And you can just hear the disdain and disgust and disregard in Buck's voice, right?

There's a kind of materiality to that that's just not present in a transcript. And the way that they treat people's concerns is really infuriating. They're incredibly dismissive. But they really have this kind of confidence that there's an airtight argument here, and that what they're really trying to do is return to the eternal yesterday, right, return to the point where “we never had any problems before COVID.” We never had to deal with this issue before. You weren't bringing this up to me before COVID.

And I think that that's such an important area to focus on here, because they keep insisting that, oh, this really has nothing to do with the pandemic. We're trying to get criminals here who are out here trying to commit crimes in masks, right, out here trying to block ambulances in masks.

And ultimately, when you look at the bill text, though, and when you look at the summary even, produced by the staff of the state legislature, you have very obviously a top line concern with the public health framing of masking and of mask mandates and of the kind of relationship between various bodies of authority within the state.

This is clearly about, in the kind of classic Max Weber way, the state and authority is about negotiation between powers, between all these different levels, right, this is ultimately playing out, and folks who do mask, folks who do protect themselves from COVID, are collateral damage here being used between this larger power struggle within the state itself.

Jules Gill-Peterson 39:52

And, you know, I don't really mean this as like a particular critique of Senator Batch. I know she's sort of been leading what is the Democratic opposition to the bill in the legislature, but it is revealing, right, that the consensus point here is that the state has a legitimate right to police the population by declaring certain people to be criminals, right?

I mean, like her line of questioning really, really hinges on the idea of public health as an exemption, as a rare legitimate reason to wear a mask, and that otherwise, right, she -- I know it's also a rhetorical strategy, but whatever -- we're talking --

Artie Vierkant 40:37

That she says she supports [proescuting “individuals who are trying to hide their identity”], yeah.

Jules Gill-Peterson 40:38

Yeah, she says she supports it, so might as well take that sincerely, right? That it's totally fine and normal and good actually, for police to have a kind of priority power to surveil public space and to make determinations on criminality based on what kinds of clothes or other things people are wearing, that that's a totally good thing in and of itself. It just accidentally, or just -- yeah, I mean, collateral damage is the right phrase. In her opinion, it is affecting, unfortunately, a group of people who through no fault of their own need to wear masks, you know, sort of the language that she's using.

And it was just sort of interesting to me, I'm sorry to be such a professor, but talk about like the kind of -- the way time is operating here, in terms of reverting back to the way things used to be, when we "had no problems," "before the pandemic," this sort of -- that we can -- you know, one way to declare being after a pandemic, when that's not true, is to pretend that we've returned to a before the pandemic. I mean, it was just interesting to me that the Senator's use of her own experience of being immunocompromised during cancer treatment is something that she always stresses. I've read several other interviews with her as well in the media.

She always stresses that that's over and that she was temporarily immunocompromised and that it gave her a certain degree of empathy. But you know, it just seems sort of interesting to also kind of hem in, right, sort of make immunocompromised people a small group of people, an exception, and to make these sorts of concerns as minimal as possible, in order to maintain the larger logic of this bill and to uphold the overall policing regime, which we wouldn't want to antagonize or challenge at all. We just want to make sure it's as rational and precise as possible, which in fact means very overdrawn and very verbose and giving the police so much power, right?

I mean, I think one of the interesting implications here, because of the way the law functions, is a police officer going to interpret a state senator wearing a mask as breaking the law? Probably not, you know, just sort of statistically. But in any case, there's just so much I think that gets revealed in this exchange, even though obviously, the Republican state senator has the most to answer for and is sort of the most germane here.

Even the sort of defense from the Democratic senator, I think, tells us a lot about just this evergreen but really important point about the kind of intensely, I'll call it fraternal relationship between liberal governance and authoritarian governance. I mean, they're just cut from the same cloth. That shouldn't -- you know that's not surprising.

Artie Vierkant 40:38

Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad that you brought us there, because I was going to mention a couple of the things that Senator Newton brought up in defense, but I also do think it's really important to just call out some of the rhetoric being used putatively in support of people's right to mask in public space. You know, it is this classic liberal thing of saying, oh, I empathize with and sympathize for the dysgenic. I was temporarily one of them, perhaps, but I am not one of them. I am not of them.

And you mentioned this as well, Jules, but even going to the point to say -- what does she say -- a person who is "compromised through no fault of their own." I know, I know that there are so many sick and disabled people listening right now who cringed hard the moment that they heard that language, you know, this -- whatever, it's classic lib stuff.

But in terms of also, a couple of things highlighted by Senator Newton trying to push for removing even this public health carve out for it, I do think it's really important to note, you guys both mentioned I think the "we didn't have a problem before COVID" part of this.

That's obviously incredibly myopic. And I think that's one of the reasons why Bea's story at the top actually is really relevant to this, but also important to note the -- he calls out specifically, it would be a “burden” to law enforcement to allow these people, whether they are sick or simply protecting themselves and others from COVID, walking around with masks, it would be such a burden on law enforcement.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 45:08

I think what I keep thinking about is a conversation I had back in 2020, with our co-host Phil Rocco, about how a lot of the people who do this job of being a state representative have day jobs and they don't get paid, or they get paid very little. Sometimes they're part-time, sometimes they're full-time. Sometimes they do like one year on, one year off. It depends based on the state. And actually even in this hearing, there's a little weird snide exchange that happens around the fact that they're not paid or have day jobs and they're -- you know, we're all lawyers in our day job, is kind of a line that comes up.

So one of the things that I think is really important to think about here, just thinking back to this conversation that I had with Phil back in 2020, where we were talking about states that were responding to the George Floyd uprising with trying to remove pandemic protections and the kind of line that we saw emerge that was like, oh, well, you liberals say that you have to mask and social distance and stay home, and yet you endorse these protests. How dare you, you know? Oh, the hypocrisy. And he said, you know, this is really about a struggle of power between these state legislators and the governor, in many cases, because state legislators, they don't have power in many ways, because they are not really well financed.

They're not -- they don't have staff, they don't have a lot of people working behind them. But what they do have is the power to give more authority to the police, right? As a governing body, state legislatures build their power not through staff or anything really sort of within the institution itself, but as a grantor of power to basically people that can act on their behalf as enforcers, as coercers.

And the governor often has a staff and has power through staff in that kind of more traditional state craft way. And so Phil was talking about a lot of the move to -- from state legislators to fund the police after the summer 2020 uprisings, right, the calls to fund the police more were about also not just funding the police, but these state lawmakers asserting that they had power and trying to enter into these power struggles with the governors, often against COVID protections or public health protections that they saw as violations of their civil liberties.

But more importantly than that, that they felt were really fucking with the normal operations of business and commerce, the things that were really upsetting to store owners and the kind of chambers of commerce types that we've seen over and over throughout the pandemic, pushing for these off ramps, pushing for the sociological production of the end of the pandemic. This is where a lot of the pressure is coming from.

So if we kind of zoom out and think about this in terms of power struggles, in terms of these kind of broader fights that we've been chronicling for a long time within state bodies, whether it's around trans care, whether it's around abortion, whether it's around COVID, we have these similar moments where ultimately it becomes so obvious how important the police and the discretion of the police to kind of remove whomever from the street becomes in the ways that states sort of consolidate and distribute power and resources in order to reflect the kind of -- honestly, the white supremacist vision for how the state should be and look, right, where it shouldn't be a problem, anyone who is really legitimately in need of a mask, right, shouldn't be arrested.

They keep saying, oh, don't worry, “we're not going to arrest granny in the grocery store.” And ultimately, it's really important to sort of think through these roles and models of innocence that keep getting held up, whether that is the sick person through no fault of their own, or the idea of like granny in the grocery store, no one's going to pick out that person that obviously visually can be profiled as someone who may need to mask, right.

This is about, in so many ways, sort of the power of the state, authoritarianism, and the police.

Artie Vierkant 49:26

And to that end, I think , it's important just to mention, I think one of the reasons why the Democrat in that clip, why Senator Batch's defense certainly frustrates me is that, again, this bill is still being debated in the North Carolina legislature.

There's been a lot of talk about how this exception that they want to remove might not be removed, or it might be amended in some way that would make it so that there's a health and safety exception left in the law, but it's specifically for people who are immunocompromised or for some sort of specific class of sick and disabled people, right, which is going to always be an extremely subjective thing, especially if it's left up to police, for example, to police discretion.

I think basically what I'm saying is that, I think, we have to resist this change really broadly, because all of this stuff, and including the stuff that we haven't gotten to yet, is an enhancement of policing power. And I think we can't -- like we shouldn't celebrate if the health and safety exceptions end up untouched, because the health and safety exception is sort of only one part of it. And if it is interpreted as being a health and safety exception, but only for immunocompromised people, or only for disabled people, or only for specific classes of people who the state sees as particularly vulnerable to COVID, right?

I mean, what does -- I guess ultimately, what this gets to is, you know, if you look at that provision, if you look at that exception, right, it's an exception for "any person wearing a mask for the purposes of ensuring the physical health and safety of the wearer or others," right. There's a lot of ways that they could change that to make it for specific classes of people, right.

But I do think that even this exception as written, I think it's just important to emphasize and raise the question of, even if this part of it, even if this exception is not struck out, what does this exception mean really to a state that doesn't believe that COVID is a real threat anymore, right?

Because the consensus from the federal government, to the state and local governments throughout the US is that COVID is over, the pandemic is over. And that to the extent that it is still a threat to people, it's only a threat maybe to the immunocompromised, or maybe for some libs, a lot of them think like maybe just the immunocompromised and older people or something like that, right. This is a conversation about altering this bill text, but that bill text is already so broadly interpretable in the first place. What do those terms then mean? What does the term health even mean, in terms of social norms, or the norms of governance, the norms of the state?

The only people -- when the only people who COVID is supposed to be a threat to in the eyes of the state are this narrow and narrow and further narrowing group of people, I think it's just really important to note, just preserving this defense only does so much because then, for example, as Bea was talking about, we don't want to have a situation where the only people who are masking around in public space are the immunocompromised people who then like have a card or something that says to a police officer, hey, it's cool, I'm “certified” to wear a mask or whatever, right?

That's just a horrible possibility to end up with, for a number of reasons, including the fact that masks obviously work best when they're used by everybody.

But if we don't want that world, what needs to happen is not simply a carve out, right. And this is why -- we'll probably return to this later, but this is why I think it's just so important to push, whether it is at solidarity encampments, or just in public in general, just to, I mean, defiantly mask no matter what the social norms are around, because that's how you fucking change social norms.

And this stuff, these changes, I think, would be totally unacceptable under an environment and in a state where we hadn't just kind of undergone this very long campaign of the sociological production to the end of the pandemic over the last few years. You know, it's not simply that this is obviously happening now because of this trend in regimes of policing, and this increasingly authoritarian mode that Democrats also are pursuing. It's also happening because of just the point that we are at in the pandemic and how deliberate the push has been to denaturalize it.

So that's the first bullet point. I promise the other three, we're gonna go much shorter on, but they are equally important. So just to continue, again, the first in the sort of what the bill does, relates to this public health exemption to the pre-existing law.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 50:40

It just deletes it.

Artie Vierkant 53:48

Yeah, it deletes it.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 54:24

It just straight up deletes the public health exemption.

Artie Vierkant 54:35

Literally if you read the bill, it's like there is strikethrough in the text. It does that. So the second thing it would do, again, this is to quote the legislative summary, "Enhance the criminal punishment if the defendant wears a mask to conceal the defendant's identity during the commission of another crime."

Image description: screenshot of the bill text showing the public health exception struck out.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 54:54

Well, and this is another reason why as you're saying Artie, just having simply an exemption for folks who are immunocompromised or who can prove that they need a mask for medical purposes does not cut it, because imagine if this is just being used as a way to enhance and increase penalties on some protesters, it still achieves the chilling effect that this bill is ultimately trying to like offer in terms of power to the police.

They want to stop these protests, they're trying to give the police powers to stop this protest, whether it's going to be stopping immunocompromised people from joining the protests, or it's going to be chilling the protest through increasing penalties and fines when they arrest them for something else, whether it's to create justifications to randomly arrest protesters, ultimately, any kind of damage that happens is good for the goal of this, which is to chill and suppress, repress, undermine, and shrink protest movements that they don't want to see.

Jules Gill-Peterson 55:54

Exactly, exactly. No, I think it's so important. It's like, even if, even if the health and safety exception were to be restored, either at the culmination of this bill or in the future, or if it continues to exist in other states -- if we're just taking this example in North Carolina, restoring that exemption would nevertheless both ratify and endorse the criminalization of masking otherwise, and just reinforce the idea that wearing a mask is, in fact, a suspect criminal act. And that in some ways, right, it's not -- it's -- I don't know if unintended consequence is the right phrase, because it's sort of intended, at least on the part of one state senator, right?

But in this section, you know, the section two of the bill, makes that really obvious, because the way that it would amend the law is to increase the sentencing penalty for someone who's been convicted of certain crimes, if they were also wearing a mask at that time. So it's just one of those like, if you're -- if the state has already criminalized something you're doing, and you're wearing a mask, that gets held against you. And so it really just kind of reduces everything down to the sort of barest, most, I don't know, transparent statement of the state's interest here, the power of the police to enforce it.

And so in that sense, being given an exemption for something that actually is becoming even more criminally intense than it was before, would be quite -- I mean, I know that's not even the situation, while we're having this conversation today, that's on the table in North Carolina, but even if that ends up being the outcome, that's really -- that would be quite -- that would be quite a situation, right, where one group of people gets to be declared innocent, I guess, if we're taking Senator Batch's phrase on face value, in order for everyone else to not only remain criminalized, but in fact, be punished more harshly for that. And as we've been talking about, that will fall hardest on protest movements, and more broadly on racist policing.

Artie Vierkant 58:05

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's little I think that I have to add to any of what both of you said, and I think a lot of the stuff that I would have to say about this kind of second bullet point, I feel like I said during the conversation that we had about the sort of first point about the health and safety exemption. But I do think it's also just important to note along those lines of everything that you both said, it's a chilling effect not only on protest, but I think it's a chilling effect on masking in general. There are a lot of, especially as people on the left, we know that there are a lot of activities that we engage in that are not protests that are criminalized generally.

And it is easy to imagine, okay, while people are engaging in those things, this also raises the stakes for including COVID precautions in -- you know, whether that is providing abortions in the states that criminalize it, whether it is being out actively organizing to collect bail funds in a state like Georgia that has just criminalized all of that work, you know, there are so many things that we could name, and especially at a moment where I think we are at this kind of amazing inflection point where I think that there is a lot of progress being made in -- not everywhere, obviously, but in some instances in terms of kind of integrating COVID and disability justice principles into certain movements, and especially in like localized movements and mutual aid networks in certain places, right. This is something that we really need to push back against being criminalized at all.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 59:42

Such an important point, Artie.

Artie Vierkant 59:44

And so this brings us to number three. The third sort of main intervention of this bill, I will read what the legislative summary says first, and then I'll kind of explain it more.

So this one is the bullet point that says "Prevent the executive branch or local governments from distinguishing between religious institutions and other entities during an emergency." Okay, so that sounds weird maybe. That could easily sound like what the fuck is that even talking about? So let me unpack that.

And to sort of do that, I'll read also from the official bill text itself, again, in the version that we currently have, the most recent version as of this recording.

"Section three would limit the discretionary authority of the executive branch and local governments during a state of emergency, specifically, any emergency orders or regulations could not distinguish between religious institutions and other entities in a way that imposes additional limitations on religious institutions."

So here's what this is doing. And this is really important, because this -- this is the part of the bill that for me makes it so obvious that this is like a pandemic grievances bill from Republicans.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:00:58

Oh yeah, this is a smoking gun. Yeah.

Artie Vierkant 1:01:00

Yeah, this is the smoking gun for that, because I guarantee what this is about is the concern trolling that right wing groups were doing, have been doing about the fact that early in the pandemic, a lot of state stay at home orders and public health measures included limits on religious gatherings.

And this led to -- there was kind of a similar line, a lot of listeners might remember, for instance, the whole thing that was the -- you know, the big kind of reactionary line of like, “if the bars are open, why are all the schools remote?,” which was something that people were saying a lot in 2020 and 2021, and could maybe sound like a clever gotcha, unless you realize that the real question was, “why are the fucking bars open,” right?

This is a similar thing. The right got very upset about -- obviously, about any pandemic protections in general, but also specifically about interventions that happened in terms of like limiting capacity, right, like placing caps on occupancy in religious settings, right.

And so again, just to reiterate, this is the biggest tip off. They’re talking about this as this is just a bill that's about concealing your identity, this just a bill, it's about returning to this, as we've talked about before, like putative state of normalcy from before. No, this is about airing out grievances about not just the Palestine solidarity encampments, and all the activity going on across the US and certainly within the state of North Carolina.

This is a bill where they have basically found a couple of targeted things that just happened to hit both COVID advocacy and people being in solidarity with Palestine, and check all of those boxes through enhancements to policing.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:02:49

Mhm. And I think what's really telling --

Artie Vierkant 1:02:51

Like, perfect storm.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:02:51

Perfect storm. And I think what's really telling is that there's been very little discussion of this in and amongst the legislators. This is kind of like going under the radar. And I understand why Republicans are actually downplaying it, because what they are playing up is that throughout these discussions that have been happening in North Carolina between these lawmakers, they are insisting over and over and over, this has nothing to do with health and safety. This has to do with public safety, crime and criminals just trying to cover their face and start riots, right.

Like there is a kind of leveraging of good and bad stereotypes of the lawless and unlawless, the sympathetic immunocompromised person versus the scary protester blocking the freeway. And so ultimately, what I think is really important is that this one provision and one angle being in here really is such an important tell as to the bullshit behind their claim that this has nothing to do with COVID, right?

This is so clearly about limiting the power of the state of North Carolina to impose specific restrictions and limitations in specific ways relating to emergencies, and health and public safety is clearly part of the purview, intended purview of this law.

The modification of this is ultimately not just about restoring it to a pre-COVID state where things were better, it's also about trying to make sure that they don't have to deal with this shit another time, right. There isn't an interest in having a public health crisis stop the economy of the state, right.

And what they're trying to do is make sure no matter what happens moving forward, yeah, they're going to definitely have a really great way to both suppress protest, increase penalties, increase the risk and the cost of protesting, both literally and in terms of disease burden, right? They can do that, and as a bonus, they're not only shutting down COVID protections now, but they're future proofing against them.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:05:11

And even like the basement floor of all of that, in the larger national political and legal and legislative environment is the use of religious freedom as a vector for continuing to produce just explicit codified recognized hierarchies in the population of who is deemed a proper, or an enhanced kind of person under the law and whose interests can trump -- that's an unfortunate phrase -- whose interests can preempt everyone else's.

And obviously, white Christians being understood to enjoy a kind of enhanced or primary citizenship against which everyone else is not only subordinated, but then that sort of designated, enhanced small group gets to protect itself from everyone else through the power of the police. So there is just this larger kind of logic, obviously, that this bill is partaking in. But I agree, I think the primary thing that this section does is just make everything very unambiguous.

Artie Vierkant 1:06:18

Yeah. Final section. We're going to return to this in just a second because this -- the conversation that we just sort of started about how there is the smoking gun, there's another smoking gun, it's in the second clip that we're going to play in a second, but we need to talk about the fourth pillar first of this law. So we'll get to that in one moment.

So finally, again, from the legislative breakdown, the legislative summary, the bill would "Impose criminal and civil liability on individuals who obstruct emergency vehicles during demonstrations." And then in the bill itself, it is clear that it is much more broad.

So it says the bill "Provides that a person who willfully impedes traffic while participating in a demonstration intended to impede traffic would be guilty of a Class A1 misdemeanor for a first offense and a Class H felony or a second or subsequent offense."

And then it also goes on to say that the organizer of such an action would be liable, as well. And so this is important to mention, obviously, because I think this is the one that is the most clear cut. Obviously, this is something that is just more explicitly targeting general forms of left protest, right.

But also, I just want to note one thing about this that I don't think that I've seen anyone else point out, but I think that this is particularly interesting, because they're trying to add this to North Carolina state law to sort of enhance penalties on people engaged in this form of protest.

And I think you could interpret that quite easily as oh, you know, protests that just kind of are marching down a road or whatever, and blocking it, and all of that stuff, just general even like a march of people carrying signs or something like that. But I think that there's another context that hasn't been talked about a lot in relation to this, which is that, where have we seen roads being blocked really recently, but in trying to shut down shipments out of arms manufacturers, right.

And I think it's relevant to note that North Carolina is the home of among other things, there's an arms manufacturer called Sturm, Ruger & Company, which does sell weapons to the IOF, and is also itself the largest arms manufacturer in North Carolina, a state which ranks fourth in the number of arms manufactured by state, some 900,000 a year. So I think --

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:08:45

Hmm. I didn't know that.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:08:46

Me either.

Artie Vierkant 1:08:47

I think that the fourth part of this bill is coming out of that, is coming out of having witnessed -- they're not acknowledging this at all, obviously. This is just my assumption. I am just assuming that they have seen protesters block shipments out of other arms manufacturers, and whether it's one of these companies pushing state legislators to add this to the bill or whether it's just them acting in their own self interest and wanting to promote the state's credit rating and GDP by making sure that shipments to the IOF out of arms manufacturers in North Carolina are not disrupted by protesters, this is what -- I feel confident that this is what they're trying to do.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:09:39

That's an, I think, very useful thing to know, because it certainly must be in some sense a motivating factor, for sure. I mean, I was thinking about this in terms of reporting, I had seen about an anti-riot law that they passed after seeing the 2020 protests that I was thinking about this in terms of seeing the exact same protests that you're talking about, where you have folks organizing to stop shipments from leaving weapons manufacturers, blocking the road, or blocking the freeway around Christmas.

There was the protest where people were trying to prevent folks trying to travel for leisure from getting to the airport and you know, disrupt those systems. And I think the interesting thing about that 2020 law that only went into effect in December of 2023, is that they were like responding to what they felt was a kind of like gleeful confidence that people had rioting in 2020 and they said, you know, it was less about the property damage, but we didn't like the confidence with which people were going about this.

And while they didn't do a ton of property damage, it will at least mean that in the future business owners can sue the people who did the damage for liabilities in court, right, in order to recoup those damages. And so it's good for everyone. Well, I mean, I would imagine that having a masking law in place that allows people to have a legitimate reason to mask in public would undermine attempts to identify people who were looting stores, for example, that they might want to prosecute with this anti-riot law that's currently being challenged.

So, you know, I think that it fits into this bigger picture of this being clearly a kind of activity that they want to ice out, disrupt and raise the risk for participating in, and particularly for organizing in this case, which because they're extending the liability not just to people who are protesting, but to the people who organize the protest, that might have nothing to do with whoever ends up being the person blocking that part of the road, you know, and hitting those charges. It's, you know, from whatever angle it's coming from, it's clear, they have a goal here in mind. And it's not one that we share.

Artie Vierkant 1:11:55

So those are the four elements of the bill. Again, this has comprised most of our conversation, just kind of walking through the specifics of what is in the bill currently, and how the debate is proceeding, maybe to just sort of transition us into our kind of bigger takeaways and final thoughts, I suppose, I want to return to what I kind of promised just a moment ago that we would be getting right back into, which is sort of more proof that this is, as I put it, “a pandemic grievances bill.”

And so I'm going to just play a clip from the North Carolina Senate Rules Committee from last week. And the speaker that you're going to hear is State Senator Warren Daniel, who's a Republican.

Clipped Audio, NC State Senator Warren Daniel 1:12:44

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd just like to make a comment. So following up on what Senator Krawiec said, you know, there was no health exception in state law for the history of this state until COVID happened. And I think the only reason that we considered doing that was because you had these egregious mask mandates that were being imposed across this state by, you know, state institutions, state elected officials. And so what was the legislature to do? You've got people imposing mask mandates that potentially put the citizens in violation of law. So I think the other issue here is that, you know, we don't really want to go back to an era when -- when single elected officials or even unelected officials are making these unilateral decisions about what we have to do or not do. I mean, we could also have a health discussion about are masks effective, are the particles that we're concerned about smaller than -- than the openings in these mask fibers and just passing through anyway? So I think as Senator Britt said, there's been no evidence that anybody in the history of the state was prosecuted for wearing a mask for health reasons. We're just returning the law back to pre-COVID status. And I think some of these concerns are just -- they're sort of hyper -- hyper, whatever hyper -- whatever the word is, aggravated. There you go. I need a big city lawyer to tell me that word. Jay. [laughter] So that's my comment, Mr. Chair, and I just would move for a favorable at the appropriate time.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:14:24

I mean, it says it all right there. It's so funny how in the Rules Committee, they open the hearing with someone making now I'm a simple country boy, not a big city lawyer. And these motherfuckers like carry the joke throughout the whole fucking hearing, like it's the only time they've ever heard it in their lives.

But it's so clear how when Senator Daniel then says this, the other Republicans who are sitting on the committee with him and also participating in the discussion, basically panic and start to insist over and over again, you know, this has nothing to do with health and safety, though.

But this, you know, this has nothing to do with health and safety, after he's just like come out there and said straight up, yeah, you know, basically, this is also great because we don't want to fucking deal with that mask mandate bullshit anymore.

Artie Vierkant 1:15:12

Well, and because, to break it down, the way he reframes it is “unelected officials” -- public health officials, right -- mandating masks and putting citizens in violation of the law, I think is the wording that he uses, which is just -- I mean.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:15:29

Mhm. Yeah, I mean, this is just like where [sighs] -- where process is so, so opaque and so good -- like the sophistication. I mean, the fact that many legislators are lawyers is not like just coincidental. And it's not only, but it often is a matter of class, it is also about like the power accorded to the state into the law to be contradictory and to say one thing, but mean another, and therefore, to be really invulnerable to accountability, or even to being challenged, or even to like being honest.

And in this case, in addition to the, well, we're all just legislating based on common sense, and obviously, those unelected public health officials who presumably are suspect due to, I don't know, imposed something -- an unusual situation created by North Carolina state law on people where it was like mandating people to break the law, in that context, right, the legislator is allowed to say at one and the same time that we want to protect the people from unelected officials mandating that they have to do something by making it illegal to do that thing, right, for everyone.

So it's like, you're not -- just to really make that clear, right, the state is saying, we're trying to -- the implicit sort of argument here, the democratic argument is -- like, literally, the democracy argument is we have to protect you from the tyranny of public health by making it illegal for you to wear a mask. Just to say that, right.

But this is exactly how legislative process, legal process, and also the role of rhetoric, and like legislative hearings and things, allows for these kinds -- I mean, that's like -- that's obtuse, just to say that, it's really obtuse. And that is -- you know, that kind of obtuseness is a method of governance, it is a method of empowering the police to really aggressively target people, and to subject them to all sorts of carceral and also just street violence.

And that is, frankly, I just think, yeah, this clip is -- it's incredible. It just feels like such a nutshell for so many ways that really objectionable laws get moved through these legislative processes and also become harder to report on, right? I think that's just sort of part of why these last two sections of the law haven't gotten much coverage, at least from what I've been consuming.

And they're also -- they're deliberately hard to pick apart. And, yeah, and the larger relationship between the demonization of public health and the production of the end of the pandemic as a fait accompli, like all of that is just sort of converging in this one recording in a way that is both really revealing, but I just wanted to sort of say, like genuinely difficult to pull apart. And that seems to be like a very smart strategy, if I were that state legislator.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:18:33

You know, I think that there's within the kind of discussion about what to do in reaction and response to this law, a lot of people have said, well, wait, this violates the ADA, doesn't it? Or well, what about if someone's sort of pushing back, maybe we can convince the Republicans on the angle of the ADA, right.

And I think these are the parts of the law that makes so clear that pushing Republicans on the ADA point will only get us so far as a sort of miniscule carve out or exception added. And as we've been talking about this whole time, that will be a fundamental tragedy, right.

The thing that is so fucking frustrating about this bill, and the discussion around it, is that when we're sort of laying this out, right, this is all being abstracted and turned into this kind of highly technical debate by the venue that it's being discussed in, right. There are rules and procedures for how these bills are discussed and analyzed and passed through their sort of processes until they become law, right.

And that's treated and taken at face value as a valuable, important, right, and true process that has absolutely zero problems with it. How could that be possible, right?

And what we're talking about is, effectively the state lawmakers working together to just layer state violence even heavier on Black and brown people. White people mask way less than people of color. This is well documented, right? This is about targeting Black and brown young people who are masking out in public space. This is about designating who public space is for, you know, people who are unafraid to show their face and readily fine to be picked up on whatever sort of surveillance, right?

People who agree to the terms of their participation in society, which is that they have to pretend that there's no fucking pandemic and they have to submit to surveillance, right.

And they can't protest. This is about layering violence, policing, economic extraction in the form of fines, or fees, or court fees, or missed work or just anything that happens to your life as a result of an arrest, for example.

This is about removing masking as a tool to protect yourself from COVID, which again, is like disproportionately laying violence and sickness and disability on communities of color. So you have what is ultimately a true weaponization of the state form of using the police and public health law, and the idea of separation of powers and federalism and authority to weaponize the air against Black people in your state. You know, this is really what these lawmakers are doing. They're not just making space inaccessible to disabled people.

This is a weapon, this is a targeted weapon that makes all of public life unsafe for all of us, less safe for everyone, but in particular, this puts a huge amount of risk and pressure on folks who are people of color and participating in these Palestine protests.

And I think what we're seeing around Stop Cop City in Georgia, what we're seeing in terms of increased repression of protests, and in terms of criminalization of mutual aid, which is not new, it's been happening for a long time, but we have been in an extended period of escalating criminalization of mutual aid. I think what this really shows is that if your single issue is COVID, you really can't stay out of these other fights, because whether you want it or not, COVID is part of all of these other issues. And as we can clearly see from this, lawmakers who are trying to impose criminal penalties and criminalize masking in public space, they see it as connected. So it's really important to see it as connected as well.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:22:32

I thought that was so, so well said and it just reminds me that, you know, one of the ways to understand the concept of solidarity isn't that like, you know, I who don't have everything put on the line by a certain law, decide to join and put myself on the line for people who are more effectived. It's that, like, I already am related, in the sense that, yeah, my single issue is actually embedded in and is already functioning in a larger context, say where it enables racist policing, or enables police targeting of left protest movements. So you know, that kind of moment of solidarity, of reaching out and making that connection, in some ways is always kind of belated, it's just sort of us catching up to something that is already true.

There's already a relationship there. It's just difficult to -- it's difficult to sense sometimes. And no wonder, when the way that it's presented under the law, or in statements by people passing laws or covered in the media, right, all of those connections are obscured and those interests, wedges are driven between those interests on purpose, right.

And so yeah, it's -- I just really appreciate this conversation for just really making that part as tangible as possible, you know, advocating for COVID and for the interests of people wearing masks for different "health" reasons is just absolutely, indissociably, materially in the real world, already connected to struggles for abolition, struggles against the police, and political struggle over racist policing, criminalization more broadly, and absolutely, protest movements in general, but obviously, and especially protests in solidarity with Palestine.

Artie Vierkant 1:24:22

And I think to also maybe reiterate, but also kind of say the inverse of what Bea said, I think this is also just a very -- this bill in particular, and the synthesis that goes on here in terms of how all of these -- you know, you can't disentangle the policing issues, like the abolition issues and the COVID issues within this bill, for example, and things more generally related to left protest and protest movements. I think that this also shows how advantageous it is for -- just frankly to say for a moment, like people who don't give a shit about COVID currently, to start thinking about it really seriously, because I think that we have an opportunity, again, to change the social norms around specifically things like masking in ways that ultimately benefit any left movement.

Because again, masking is something that some people do for protecting themselves and others from COVID and other things. It is a thing that some people do simply for OpSec. It's important to really think about it, and I'm going to kind of try to address this specifically to -- I know that Death Panel listeners, by and large, are not generally people who need to be told reasons to care about COVID.

But I think that whether you're listening to this and you care about COVID and you have people in your life that you either want to, I don't know, send this to, or just try and talk to them about this specifically, I think that could be really helpful, to sort of try to speak to those people for a second, who maybe think it is just totally over and that concerns are “overblown,” or that it's -- just trying to think of even some of the things that I've seen various people just throw off over the last couple of years, that it's like “a political dead end” or some shit like that. You know, the left is always under attack.

But like prior to 2020, prior to COVID, the left's ability to mask was already also under attack. We don't have to look back very far to that either. Like we all should remember 2018 when Congress introduced the Unmasking Antifa bill, right? That was two years before COVID.

So you know, in many ways, of course, now, at this point, so far into this process that again, we've named and called the sociological production of the end of the pandemic, you know, of course, they're coming for masking, but the joke is on them, because to sort of reiterate something that I said earlier, they can choose to call whatever we're doing a crime at any given moment, and we're still going to do it, right?

People do the most incredible shit. There are amazing organizing projects all around the US that are basically 100% illegal, and we almost never talk about them on the show, intentionally, because some things have to happen without a spotlight on them, just so that they can keep happening for as long as possible and help as many people as possible.

So that in itself, perfect reason to just, you know, fuck it, mask defiantly. I mean, do you see how much masking pices these people off? Like, we talked about this a long time ago, and we've said it many times, and we can say it again, you can just start masking again, if you want to.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:27:45

Absolutely.

Artie Vierkant 1:27:46

And now, it has the added benefit of it might really, even really, really piss off a lot of the people that you hate anyway, the people that we all hate the most. If you do, it has the added benefit of, as I kind of said earlier, the more that we project an established masking as a long-term new social norm, the more likely it is that it will take that much more to be able to make it illegal, even if you're only interested in it for OpSec reasons, right? This is basic, but right, this is coalition stuff.

This is a win-win. Like we protect OpSec we protect each other from infectious diseases, we make our spaces and our movements more accessible, and make it easier to bring the sick and disabled proletariat, whose voices are absolutely missing in a lot of spaces already, we bring those people into these spaces. And as an added bonus, again, we piss a lot of people off doing it.

So that's my proposal. Fuck H237. Fuck Ohio Code 3761.12 or whatever, and all the other laws in the 18 other states and DC that have them.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:28:58

Well, and I will say if there is a very interesting exception in the North Carolina law, which is that there is an exception for union activity. So there is an immediate way around this if this passes, but it requires essentially grad unions being the sponsors of the solidarity encampments on the universities, and designating all activities in the solidarity encampments, or as part of Palestine protests, as being part of the union activity, because there is a workaround that says quote, I'm quoting from the law, Section 1A,

This article shall not apply to any preliminary meetings held in good faith for the purpose of organizing, promoting or forming a labor union or a local organization, or a subdivision of any labor union. Nor shall the provisions of this article apply to any meetings held by a labor union or organization already organized, operating and functioning and holding meetings for the purpose of transacting and carrying out functions, pursuits and affairs expressly pertaining to such labor union.

So, as I mentioned at the top, the law used against me in 2011, the law used to chill the Occupy Wall Street protests and the encampment at Zuccotti Park and lower Manhattan, that was from labor organizing in the 1840s, where tenant farmers rose up against their landlords, against the police and were cracked down on by the state. And they wanted to prevent that from happening again, right?

Masking and leftist organizing have gone hand in hand for decades. And this is always going to be important to remember. And I think what's also potentially helpful in this instance is that this might have a little loophole in it, that if we get creative, could actually sort of increase perhaps labor union support of the pro Palestine movement, which has been a really hard line to budge, but you're not seeing grad unions hold back the same way.

And so I think that there really is something that we can exploit here. So I wanted to just throw that in at the end in case there are folks specifically in North Carolina who are listening to this, looking for a way around this or through this or to encourage people to not be afraid of this law.

Because as I said, at the top, the most important thing is to not let these laws intimidate us. We have to absolutely continue and keep showing up in droves, in large numbers to pro Palestine protests.

The more that we resist these laws and these changes to these laws, the harder it's going to be to continue to enforce them, and the harder it's going to be to pass these things. It absolutely cannot have the chilling effect that it's intended to have because they're trying to shut this movement down in its tracks, and it's our job to stop them. Just saying.

Jules Gill-Peterson 1:31:47

Well said.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:31:48

So with that, maybe this is a good place to leave it for today.

Artie Vierkant 1:31:52

Sounds good.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:31:53

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[ Outro music ]

[ Chime ]

[ Audio montage of moments the legislature did the “I’m just a simple country lawyer” joke ]

Unidentified Speaker 1 1:35:14

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm not a smart, big city lawyer. I'm just a simple-minded country boy. So I --

Unidentified Speaker 2 1:35:21

I agree with you [laughter].

Unidentified Speaker 1 1:35:25

So since I've got a big city lawyer up there, I thought -- I thought I'll grab a lawyer from a bigger city than -- than Britt's from but anyway.

[ Bleep ]

Unidentified Speaker 1 1:35:38

I suspect -- again, I'm not a big city lawyer, and I suspect the big city lawyers might disagree with you on that last point.

Unidentified Speaker 3 1:35:46

Well, as a small country lawyer, not a big city lawyer, I don't know about the civil liberty issues that you expressed, about the photos of the license plates and things like that. But I know there's nothing I ever studied at any time prior to the bar exam or, you know, in over 20 years of practicing law, where posting someone's identifiable information would be a violation of their civil rights, number one.

Clipped Audio, NC State Senator Warren Daniel 1:36:08

Hyper, hyper, whatever hyper -- whatever the word is -- aggravated, there you go. I need a big city lawyer to tell me that word.

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Transcript by Kendra Kline. (Kendra is currently accepting freelance transcript work — email her if you need transcripts or visit her website)