Smiles on school mask protesters were not neighborly
If they hadn’t been smiling, I might have forgotten that the people screaming at me on Riva Road on Aug. 18 were neighbors, schoolmates, fellow voters. But I soon realized those naked grins, out there on the sidewalk protesting mask mandates, were not neighborly.
The smiles were just another provocation tactic; like the “No Masks on Kids” signs and the bullhorn used to direct insults like “sheep,” and “child torturers” at the pro-safety-measures group I was with, on the opposite sidewalk in front of the Board of Education building. Of course, a lot of us on the pro-safety side were also smiling, but you couldn’t see our mouths because we were all masked. We were neighbors at an impasse on Riva Road that day — just as we are in our neighborhoods — divided by a thin piece of fabric.
The mask situation should have been settled; first, months ago by science that shows properly worn masks can significantly lower the incidence of spreading COVID-19 in schools, then by our county superintendent’s declaration that masks must be worn in every school building, and finally, by the Maryland State Department of Education’s Aug. 26 masking edict.
But that day on Riva Road, a mask mandate in schools was still up in the air, needing reinforcement. Over 50 of us had shown up to thank Dr. Arlotto and the mask-supporting board members (Bunmi Omisore, Dana Schallheim, Robert Silkworth and Joanna Bache Tobin). And to remind the other Board members that there are dozens of things they should be addressing right now to better prepare our school system in a year when districts around the nation are already reporting massive spread of contagion, pediatric emergency rooms packed with school kids with COVID-19 and schools ending their in-person instruction after a week of classes.
As a parent, I came to the pro-mask rally that day to join fellow members of Parental Alliance for Student Safety, a Facebook group organized last year by Kristen DeBoy Caminiti of Gambrills and Laticia Hicks of Crofton, which promotes the sharing of information and advocacy for more equitable, safe approaches to reopening AACPS schools. Caminiti, a social worker by training, had set the ground rules for the sidewalk gathering the day before, including direct orders not to engage with anti-maskers.
“We’re going to be safe, respectful and kind.” Caminiti said.
Yet, as the rhetoric picked up, it became increasingly clear that that fabric veils a lot of frustration; just as those smiles veil a growing incivility. We were waving our signs as board members arrived when a woman in a Navy cap marched across the crosswalk with her handmade “No CRT. No Masks” sign and pushed her way through the teachers and kids on our side to get a spot near the street. There, she planted herself in front of a woman holding a “Wearing is caring” sign. She kept a great big smile on her face while she blocked the woman and her message.
“Go back to your side of the street. Stop bullying us,” said “Wearing-is-caring.”
“This is my America. You’re being a bully!” Navy-cap heckled, unironically as she hip-checked the other woman out onto Riva Road.
“Stop bullying us!” the “Wearing is Caring” signer managed, jumping back up on the curb, taking her place in front of the Navy cap. “Go back to your side!”
While the rest of us took a minute to respond to the scuffle, Caminiti stepped up, tucking her three small, masked children safely behind her, and urging us all to stay away. “This is a peaceful gathering,” she said.
After a few minutes of determined heckling, the woman in the Navy cap retreated, calling out, “You all are sheep!” “We have freedom!” “We have the Constitution!” and finally, “We have God!” as she went back to the anti-maskers side, smiling the whole way.
While I fully intended to follow Caminiti’s decree to keep it positive, I became increasingly furious that a bunch of people paying lip-service to “freedom” were pushing themselves to the front of the board’s agenda and putting all of us in harms-way. Quite literally, in the case of the hip-check that knocked a woman into a busy four-lane road under the guise of personal freedom.
That fury hit home again when I watched a boy of 6 or 7, bent over, his face beet-red with the effort of shouting “Mandate-free!” in our direction. How could parents be so determined to break this simple health protocol, knowing that, in less than two weeks, that little mask-denier will be in a classroom with a teacher and 20 or 30 other kids all counting on him to wear a mask all day? As if in answer to my concerns about objectors, a few hours later, the same maskless group hijacked the Board of Education meeting with similar rhetoric, fortified by the fact that two elected board members, Michelle Corkadel and Corinne Frank, were maskless and refused repeated requests to put on masks in the crowded room.
After authorities cleared the room of everyone, including journalists and board members, the board returned to continue the mask discussion, which went on long into the evening. Finally, seven hours later, the entire meeting was rendered useless when the board gave up and said they’d discuss masks again when they meet on Sept. 1.
Out on the sidewalk, it wasn’t much better. Police had to step up to protect members of the Anne Arundel County NAACP from the “No-Mask” group, which continued to taunt and encroach, sounding alarms for all of us who can easily imagine those people’s emboldened children removing masks in classrooms with unvaccinated children, revealing the classic bully-grin. While I worry a lot about renegades starting outbreaks in the classroom, I worry more about the divisions I witnessed on Riva Road that day; those inside the building and those out on the sidewalk.
Someday, hopefully not very far down the road, we will all need to come together in order to recover from the collective damage done by these years of calamitous illness, misinformation, destabilized leadership and fractured education. Right now, we are all standing at a crossroads; some of us masking our anger with fabric; others masking it with smiling hypocrisy.