Tulsa welcomes rally despite health risks

The mayor of Tulsa said Wednesday it was “an honor” to welcome President Donald Trump for a campaign rally this weekend despite a recommendation from the city’s health director to postpone the event because of coronavirus concerns.

G.T. Bynum, a Republican, told a news conference that “I’m not positive that everything is safe” and urged residents who planned to attend Trump’s Saturday night gathering to wear masks and take other precautions. Bynum said he would not be attending the rally but would greet Trump at the airport.

“The president chose this city, and so it falls on us,” Bynum said. “And it is an honor.”

Some residents, business owners and civil-rights activists have called on Bynum to cancel Trump’s rally at the 19,000-seat BOK Center in Tulsa, warning it could bring a confluence of dangers.

They fear his visit—the first large-scale gathering in the state since lockdown—will spread the coronavirus at a time when cases are spiking. Trump’s decision to hold the possibly divisive rally on Juneteenth weekend—an annual commemoration of black emancipation—has offended some in Tulsa, which has a long history of racial prejudice.

Tulsa Health Department Director Bruce Dart said at Wednesday’s news conference that he had recommended Trump’s rally “be postponed until it’s safer.” Tulsa County has recorded 1,825 confirmed coronavirus cases, Dart said, including a record-high 96 cases on Wednesday. There have been 64 deaths.

Tulsa plans to close down several blocks around the BOK Center, where Trump’s rally starts at 7 p.m. Saturday, police chief Wendell Franklin said at the news conference. He said the National Guard plans to bolster security over the weekend along with federal agencies such as the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, as well as police departments from outside the city.

“The eyes of the world are upon us now,” Franklin said. He said he was expecting the “potential for a mass amount of people that probably Tulsa has never seen before.”

The guardsmen will be unarmed but will carry shields, batons and pepper spray in case they need to protect themselves, said Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Geoff Legler.

Top officials including the mayor said they had no advance warning from the White House or the campaign before it was announced last week that Trump planned to visit Tulsa.

Tulsa is still actively investigating the 1921 white mob violence against African Americans that killed as many as 300 people. Many are calling on Trump to cancel an event they consider an unnecessary provocation at a time of nationwide protests about racism and police brutality.

Trump arrives one day after Juneteenth, the annual commemoration of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Representatives of the Greenwood District — the affluent black neighborhood that was burned down in 1921 — filed a lawsuit this week seeking to block the rally unless it could be held in accordance with social distancing guidelines, fearful that Trump’s indoor crowd could be a “super-spreader event” that leaves infection in its wake.

“What is going on in Tulsa right now is madness,” said Paul DeMuro, one of the lawyers who filed the suit. “Our local officials have abandoned the community.”

A two-day Juneteenth celebration also is scheduled for Friday and Saturday in the Greenwood District near downtown, and several anti-Trump protests are planned for Saturday. The Rev. Al Sharpton will be the keynote speaker.