A few hundred Utahns huddled around the amphitheater at the Orem City Center Park on Wednesday evening waving American flags, holding signs with slogans like Dont Mask Our Kids and COVID 1984 and, noticeably, not wearing masks or face coverings during a rally against government mask mandates.

The Rally for Liberty in Utah County featured a number of prominent speakers, including Ammon Bundy and Shawna Cox, anti-government activists who were part of an armed militia that took over an Oregon wildlife refuge in 2016, who called mask requirements unconstitutional and claimed masks are harmful to adults and children.

Bundy, clutching a microphone and wearing faded leather boots and a chocolate brown cowboy hat, told the crowd that solidarity was the way to stand up to government mandates, such as the statewide mandate for public K-12 schools this fall.

Plan on standing and uniting together, because that is what it will come down to, he said. It will come down to each one of us saying no. And then as the powers come to come and force us in whatever were saying no to, then our neighbors will come around us and defend us and defend each other. Thats exactly what happened at the Bundy Ranch, thats what must happen all over the United States and all over the country if we are to preserve liberty.

Bundy asked the crowd, which ranged from elderly couples to parents with their toddlers and infants, a question: Who has the right to rule you?

No one! shouted one woman. I do! yelled another. God! another person said.

It is not about a mask, Bundy said. It is not about a virus. It is about, whose right is it to rule? Who has the right to rule your life? Your time, your labor? Who has the right to control your body?

We are entering the greatest battle to defend individual rights that has ever been waged before, he continued. If we lose this battle, then we and our children will be plunged into the depths of darkness for many generations. This darkness will be more severe than ever before.

Salem resident Amberli Nelson, who told the rally attendees she was a mother of seven, called the statewide mask mandate for K-12 schools an unprecedented usurping and an abuse of Utah Gov. Gary Herberts executive powers, adding that she wanted to unmask the truth about masks and the many other ways the government in the state of Utah is masking the truth.

The time has come to unmask ourselves, unmask our voices, and unmask our righteous rage at the unlawful acts of tyranny that are being hurled at us daily, dressed up with official-sounding titles such as mandates, Nelson said over the cheering crowd.

Nelson said wearing masks should always and only be a choice and never an act of compulsion by mandate, calling the school mandate a social experiment to see which residents would comply with government orders.

Remember we did not hire our representatives and elected officials to protect our health, she said. We hired them to protect our liberties. Its our job to protect our health, and its still our right to choose how and when and where.

Enoch Moore, a member of Defending Utah, an organization that exposes the truth regardless of its popularity and promot(es) liberty while exposing shills and fake friends of freedom, encouraged parents to pull their kids out of public school if possible and, if unable to, to tell their kids to ignore the mask mandate.

Refuse all testing, Moore told the crowd. Refuse to get your temperature taken. Refuse to wear a mask of any kind. Refuse anything that could be classified as medical treatment (to which) they did not consent. Teach your children not to consent, because they are following the law when they dont consent. And make sure they have like-minded friends at school, because they will try to turn the children against the parents.

At the same time Bundy was telling the audience about the 2016 armed standoff against the federal government, Utah County Commissioner Bill Lee was holding a virtual town hall with residents who had questions or concerns about the school mask requirement.

Lee, who on July 15 requested the commission consider asking the governor to give the county compassionate exemption from the one-size-fits-all mask mandate in Utah Countys public schools but later withdrew his request, told a dozen town hall attendees that he nixed the request because his concerns were addressed in exemptions clarified in a health order issued by the Utah Department of Health on July 17.

I wasnt attacking necessarily the full exemption to masks, because thats not an area that was even really on the table for discussion, Lee said. Thats going to be at the governors level and with the state health department and probably some others there. I was trying to find a way in a compromise, which is the hardest position to be in. Because I can see that, you know, no masks, full masks, were both going to be really hard to play. So I was trying to find some compromise position.

Lee encouraged those who were concerned about masks in schools to reach out to their representatives and senators in the Utah State Legislature, adding that he supported local control and believed that decisions on masks should be left up to individual school districts.

Lee originally intended to hold the town hall at the Utah Valley Convention Center but announced Tuesday it would instead be held online. The commissioner attempted to organize a town hall with county superintendents on July 28, but it fell through when some school officials expressed concern.

Healthcare executives and infectious disease experts have repeatedly told state and Utah County officials that masks are an effective way of slowing the spread of COVID-19 and arent harmful for those without respiratory-related medical conditions.

Connor Richards covers government, the environment and south Utah County for the Daily Herald. He can be reached at crichards@heraldextra.com and 801-344-2599.

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Utahns speak out against masks at 'Rally for Liberty' in Orem and during county commissioner's town hall - Daily Herald