Juneau to discuss mask mandate, systemic racism

By
Suzanne Downing
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29

Public testimony will be taken by the Juneau Assembly at its Monday meeting on two controversial ordinances: One that would require a face mask be work in public indoor settings, and another that would establish a “systemic racism review committee” that would review every ordinance before it was enacted to ensure it does not promote racism.

The mask ordinance will be discussed during the 5:30 pm special Assembly meeting.

The systemic racism review committee is on the agenda of the 7 pm Committee of the Whole meeting.

The proposed mask ordinance would mandate cloth or surgical fabric coverings over a person’s nose and mouth when in publicly accessible indoor locations or indoor communal areas outside the home. Exceptions would be made for those with disabilities and young children. The proposed emergency ordinance requires six votes to pass. Read the ordinance here.

According to the city manager’s report, it would better if citizens voluntarily wore masks, but he says they are not doing so in sufficient numbers to eliminate community transmission.

“Mitigation of this disease is critical for the well-being of our citizens, our businesses, our school system and our health care system,” according to Manager Rorie Watt.

“Numerous trusted public health officials have identified that mask wearing is one of the most important COVID19 transmission mitigation measures. These health officials include the Alaska Chief Medical Officer, the Alaska Chief Epidemiologist, and the director of the Centers for Disease Control.”

The systemic racism review committee is a proposed ordinance that will create the new 7-member committee charged with reviewing all Assembly legislation and advising on whether an action by the Assembly likely includes a systemic racism policy.

The systemic racism committee would be appointed by the Assembly and would be comprised of “the most balanced representation possible. Members shall have experience identifying unlawful discrimination— including based on race, color, or national origin—experience identifying social justice inequity, or intimate knowledge of local tribal culture and practices. The Assembly must appoint only candidates that it believes would legitimately represent the long term interests of those groups.”

Read more about the ordinance here. The Assembly will not be taking final action on Monday.

Juneau Assembly considers new ‘systemic racism’ committee to screen laws

To provide public comment, call the Municipal Clerk’s public testimony request phone line at 586-0215 or send an email to [email protected] by 3 p.m. July 20 and provide your full name, email address, the phone number you’ll be calling from, and the agenda topic(s) on which you wish to testify.

You can also testify by clicking the “Raise Hand” button (online Zoom Webinar) or press *9 (telephone) when those items come up on the agenda. Testimony time will be limited based on the number of participants. Members of the public are encouraged to send their comments in advance of the meeting to [email protected].

The public can listen to the audio or watch the meeting in a few different ways: connect directly to the Zoom Webinar https://juneau.zoom.us/j/94684718036, call 1-346-248-7799 and enter Webinar ID 946 8471 8036; or watch on Facebook Live.

29 COMMENTS

  1. It’s hard to believe that “trusted public health officials” are still insisting that masks are one of the “most important” mitigation measures! Why is anyone still trusting these people? Not only is science still unable to show actual experimental evidence for that claim, but the real-world experiments have played out at this point. Places which never imposed a lockdown or mask mandate are currently at the tail end of the spread: in South Dakota, for instance, the curve basically flattened out by mid-May, and today SD had fewer new cases (44 vs 82 in AK) and fewer active cases (836 vs 1144 in AK) than AK in spite of a larger population in a much smaller area.
    But you don’t have to look any farther than Anchorage for evidence of the ineffectiveness of masks. Since the mayor’s unilateral order three weeks ago, in spite of the Orwellian drumbeat of the necessity of face coverings playing in stores, and almost all Anchorage residents obediently muzzling themselves since then, Anchorage’s daily positive rate has steadily climbed: daily numbers are in the 30’s this week, as opposed to singles and teens in the weeks before the order. But in the Mat-Su, with no mask order (and where there has been a brisk economy and a number of normal-life public celebrations and festivals), there have been only a couple of small bumps in positive numbers – daily positives have barely squeaked into the double digits just twice in the same time period. Correlation is not causation so I won’t argue that masks are actually increasing the spread (although as masks are moist microbe-gatherers, someone might be able to make that argument), but it’s pretty silly to look at the data in Anchorage and Mat-Su and still repeat the claim that masks are effective, let alone “one of the most important transmission mitigation measures.”
    And beyond that, AK hospitals are NOT overwhelmed (out of nearly 800 hospital patients, only 27 are COVID or suspected COVID), and the death rate is minuscule here (0.009 of confirmed cases, or 0.00002 per capita) and falling like a rock everywhere else; the ever-flailing CDC can’t even justify calling COVID an epidemic anymore. So why exactly are they still trying to muzzle healthy people? I don’t believe it has a thing to do with public health.

  2. One question for Rorie, will this mask edict specify what type of mask must be worn? I mean , I’ve seen folks wearing everything from Cowboy hankies to Crown Royal bags, are these really effective? What about an Arab Burka? Futher on will the mask dictate be subject to the new racist review committee?

      • There is no virus. If you did your due diligence and researched some, you would know that the discovery study of sars-cov-2 had a sample size of 7 people, There was no control group of non-“infected” people, and they never purified the RNA that they claimed was sars-cov-2. It doesnt stop there…the RNA that they found only shares 80% commonality with sars-cov-1. People share more DNA with rats, then sars-cov-2 shares with sars-cov-1. NO im not a conspiracy theorist, thousands of doctors around the world have found this. YES they are being censored. Just please look it up, I have no reason to lie to you. The study was from Dr. Peng Zhou. Thats the one that the government looks to as proof of the existence of sars-cov-2.

    • You are correct. At minimum. Only an N95 mask is effective. Correctly stated by Dr Fauci from the off. All politics from that point forward………..

      • The beginning of the end of Alaska’s uniqueness from the lower 48. Now in Juneau the parameters of “free speech” will be curtailed and defined by a government body. Good luck Alaska. We are in for a slippery slope!

    • Pretty soon we will all be made to wear masks that say “White Devil” while black folk will be free of wearing any mask at all…. because “RACIST!”

  3. Assembly members are also the ” racism” committee. If they are not able to decide if a new law/regulation will be racist, then they should resign. The public process is how our representatives decide if a Lewis is fair, etc. Creating a new ” committee ” will not accomplish anything that listening to the people they represent would not also accomplish.

    • Here’s what it will accomplish: it will give an unelected group of lefties with friends on the Assembly a whole lot of power and probably a meeting stipend as well.

  4. The legislature can’t get the job of living within the means of the state done in a timely, efficient manner but they want to take up some BS that migrates up from the lower 48 about racism. What a load of crap. Burn money, burn time, accomplish not one damn thing. This is going to result in another $180K income to some other non achiever that has no real world job skills, at the expense of the citizens of the state.

  5. The lone ranger wore a mask. Didn’t stop covid. Neither will any other mask. The mask, as it turns out, is useless except as a panacea to make the fearful more amenable to myself being able to operate in a free society. But I am not wearing a mask, because there is no mask law, it violates the rights of everyone, and it isn’t saving anyone.

  6. First, One trusts the discussion of “systemic” racism will include removing totem poles, symbols of a culture in which slave ownership was “systemic”,
    .
    …symbols which, if the systemic racism argument is to be consistent, should be called out as Alaska’s version of Confederate statuary.
    .
    Second, … if Juneau’s government orders its subjects to be Masked Avengers, its subjects will be Masked Avengers, no questions asked …or allowed because government is the cottage industry that keeps the Holy City of Juneau alive and nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds them, right?
    .
    Subjects will be Masked Avengers, for years if necessary, until wearing their mandated symbols of obedience becomes as much a part of daily life as wearing any other article of clothing.
    .
    And thus they’ll be permanently conditioned to that ultimate separation of power: separation between Rulers and ruled.

    • Great comment ,Morrigan Separation has never lasted in a human existence even opposites attract ! A little tension can sometimes be a good thing!

  7. As far as the mask wearing…what if a person has had the virus, fully quarantined, recovered, and now has antibodies making them immune. I’m that person, perhaps I will contact the Health Dept to see if certificates can be provided that we can carry with us.

    • When we need a health certificate from the government to move freely, we’ll have much bigger troubles than a Chinese virus!

      • A bit like having to provide your Social Security number to the local *private utility*– you don’t have to, but they aren’t obligated to provide you service, they say……. Alaska used to print your SS number on your drivers license, it got *obscured* on mine. Maybe your next drivers license will have you Covid Vax. status printed on it, if not printed on your license, it’ll surely be listed in that *private folder* where your *warnings* are logged by the local Police Dept.

  8. What is ” in sufficient numbers to eliminate community transmission” And are they arbitrary or capricious in nature! That is the test for good & proper legislation.

  9. It’s not the masks people. It’s the control of you. Does anyone think the 8 million firearms purchased in the last six months are all for “collectors”? Ordinary Americans are arming themselves for defense in the upcoming altercation. Keep pushing leftists. Do some whining along the way if any oppose your agenda. The left, especially the radical left, are accomplishing nothing but property and political damage against their own. Once the arrow of truth and righteousness leaves the Americans’ bow, against the left, it cannot be recalled. The left will have proven, once again, that they are but foul, angry, lying bullies. Another asterisk for a forgotten footnote in history.

    • As for “systemic racism”, the exact same thing is happening in over 50 cities in America, at this moment. Not only attempts but success in several. It is a concerted move by leftists across the country. A litany of nefarious additions in the fine print of all. They want special departments to ‘deal’ with the problem of systemic racism. Those special “departments” are for the benefit of mainly one race. Guess which.
      Mao killed 69 million Chinese to accomplish his takeover of china, under communism. Lenin and Stalin close to that. Stalin said: “Kill one and it’s murder. Kill a million and it’s a statistic”.
      I believe the ‘game is afoot’ in America.

  10. What is ” in sufficient numbers to eliminate community transmission” And are they arbitrary or capricious in nature! That is the test for good & proper legislation. Who will make the “numbers call” for when it should stop?

  11. I whole-heartedly agree there is systemic racism now. Look at all the anti-White bias and proposed legislation around the country to discriminate against Whites, Asians and Hispanics solely on color.

  12. Mandated masks? Isn’t that like closing the barn door after the barn is empty? States and cities with the ‘strictest’ mandates on social distancing (what a corny phrase), masks, quarantines, rules and regulations, are the most contagion filled. That is what the “experts”, including the weasel from CDC, say. The solution is not masks. The solution is reporting truth, like “deaths” due to wuhan v. The lies are so tremendous, it is unbelievable. Every death in America (like the motorcyclist) is being attributed to the ‘virus’. BS. If the truth be told, wuhan v. is less lethal than flu. Why are the rioters and blm (ugh) exempted from all mandates requiring citizens to turn over their freedoms? The answer has been on the wall for some time. The entire wuhan v. fiasco is and has been a giant scam. A ploy by leftist globalists to win WWIII without firing a shot. They send a few ‘dissenters’ to ‘camps’ at the start (Uighur muslims and Hong Kong rebels in china, for instance). The rest are gradually turned into obedient sheep by threats, intimidation, propaganda, the insistence that ‘gov’t’ is the only savior, with troops of goons (antifa, blm) to back up the nonsense, or else.
    We were warned by our founders. The time is nigh to take action or lose it all. November seems far away at times. It will be here before you know it. Vote, vote, vote, vote. Our best chance.

  13. This is Complete medical tyranny and psychological torture & it must be stopped!! Numbers and diagnosis’ are being cooked up everywhere to disrupt an election year, hospital CFO’s and so-called trusted or genuinely duped doctors are getting huge kickbacks for pushing this fearful garbage. Washington States mandate will expire November 5th~!!! What does that tell you?

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