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Tulsa imposes curfew ahead of Trump rally
TULSA, United States, June 19, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Tulsa, Oklahoma has
imposed a curfew ahead of a campaign rally by US President Donald
Trump on Saturday, amid tensions in a city that was the site of one of
the worst racial massacres in US history.
In an executive order Thursday, Mayor G.T. Bynum cited fears of
violent protests surrounding Monday’s rally in proclaiming a “civil
emergency.”
The curfew, which went into effect at 10 pm Thursday until 6 am
Saturday and resumes after the rally until 6 am Sunday, covers an area
in downtown Tulsa around the arena where Trump is to speak.
More than 100,000 people were expected to attend the rally, which
has been sharply criticized as both a potential COVID-19 superspreader
event and insensitive to Tulsa’s painful racial history.
In May and June of 1921, a white mob burned down a black Tulsa
neighborhood, Greenwood, killing as many as 300 people and destroying
some 1,200 buildings.
The Trump rally has drawn calls for protests and civil rights
leader Al Sharpton was expected to speak at a rally Friday
commemorating Juneteenth, an unofficial holiday marking the end of
slavery in the United States.
Bynum’s executive order cited “civil unrest” in Tulsa and the
United States since the May 25 killing of George Floyd by a white
Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for nearly nine
minutes, suffocating him.
It also noted that a federal exclusion zone was being established
around the Trump rally site “in the interests of national security.”
“As mayor, I have received information from the Tulsa Police
Department and other law enforcement agencies that shows that
individuals from organized groups who have been involved in
destructive and violent behavior in other states are planning to
travel to the city of Tulsa for purposes of causing unrest in and
around the rally,” the executive order said.
The curfew bans all pedestrian and vehicular traffic in a
designated area in the vicinity of the Trump rally.
BSS/AFP/MRU/2040hrs