March 4, 2022
A group of about a dozen demonstrators held a protest in favor of mandatory masking outside the New York Department of Education building on Wednesday. The crowd sang a pro-mask nursery rhyme in hopes that New York Mayor Eric Adams would re-up the city’s school mask mandate.
The Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools group organized the “Masking for a Friend” rally on the steps of the Tweed Courthouse in Manhattan, where the department is headquartered. “It’s not about you, also not hard to do,” the group sang to the tune of a familiar nursery rhyme. “Just because we’re tired doesn’t mean it’s over. Mandate masks.”
“Continuing to require masks in NYC public schools, even when case rates are lower, will keep schools safe and open by slowing the spread of any COVID that enters classrooms, centering the needs of higher-risk school community members, keeping everyone in schools as healthy as possible,” the group wrote on a Facebook event page.
Their pro-mask nursery rhyme failed to persuade Eric Adams, however, as the mayor ended the city’s mask mandate on Friday. The city’s vaccine passport program was also suspended. “It’s time to re-open our city,” Adams said in a press conference.
NYC’s decision to drop its mask mandate and vaccine passport program mirrors moves made by cities who also had similarly strict COVID policies, such as Los Angeles. Both California and New York have dropped statewide mandates over the last few weeks, as have most of their major cities. Several European countries have also scrapped their COVID-related mandates, with the most recent being France after the nation dropped its vaccine passport program on Thursday.
SOURCE: The National Pulse