Trump crowd grows, clashes with protesters ahead of rally
TULSA, Okla. — A gathering of supporters of President Donald Trump grew larger Friday and occasionally clashed with opponents of the president outside a 19,000-seat arena in the city’s downtown where he plans to speak this weekend.
Trump’s scheduled rally Saturday night in a city with a long history of racial tension will be held just blocks from the site of one of the worst racial massacres in U.S. history and comes as the number of coronavirus cases in the state and the city have spiked in recent days.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request to require everyone attending Trump’s rally to wear a face mask and maintain social distancing inside the arena to guard against the spread of the coronavirus.
The court ruled that the two local residents who asked that the thousands expected at the rally be required to take the precautions couldn’t establish that they had a clear legal right to the relief they sought. In a concurring opinion, two justices noted that the state’s plan to reopen its economy is “permissive, suggestive and discretionary.”
“Therefore, for lack of any mandatory language in the (plan), we are compelled to deny the relief requested.”
The request was made by John Hope Franklin for Reconciliation, a nonprofit that promotes racial equality, and the Greenwood Centre Ltd., which owns commercial real estate, on behalf of the two locals described as having compromised immune systems and being particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.
On Friday, while city workers erected a high metal fence to completely barricade the Trump rally site, tempers heated as several Black Tulsans walked up to a corner where Trump supporters were bellowing religious messages through bullhorns.
Abrienne Smith squared off with one after the other Trump supporters, talking about killings of African Americans. When a reporter asked why she decided to come to the Trump rally site, Smith said: “Because I have a Black son. I am worried about him. He’s 4. I am scared for his life because of stuff like this,” while pointing at the Trump supporters.
In the blocks between the BOK Center and a nearby Juneteenth celebration in the city’s historic Greenwood District, people gathered at two spots on separate corners to paint murals on brick walls of buildings.
Meanwhile, Tulsa’s Republican mayor, G.T. Bynum, rescinded a day-old curfew he had imposed for the area around the BOK Center ahead of the rally.
The curfew took effect Thursday night and was supposed to remain until Sunday morning, however Trump tweeted Friday that he had spoken to Bynum and that the mayor told him he would rescind it.