CLEVELAND — Some Northeast Ohio residents will gather Saturday morning in Cleveland to protest having to wear masks.
The event starts at 11 a.m. at the Cleveland script sign at Edgewater Park, 6500 Cleveland Memorial Shoreway.
“Please come out and show support if you can. We need to be heard. The silent majority isnt silent anymore,” said an event organizer. “We are losing are freedom and if we dont make this right it will be gone. Stand for something.”
Earlier this week, Gov. Mike DeWine announced the launch of the Public Health Advisory Alert System that color-codes counties based on the threat level of how easily COVID-19 is spreading. Counties marked as “red” by the Ohio Department of Health are placed under a mandatory mask order.
As of Saturday morning, there are 12 counties in Ohio that fall under a Level 3 Public Emergency where residents are mandated to wear masks.
Those counties include:
- Wood
- Lorain
- Cuyahoga
- Summit
- Trumbull
- Franklin
- Fairfield
- Pickaway
- Montgomery
- Butler
- Hamilton
- Clermont
RELATED: Gov. DeWine issues order making masks mandatory in high-risk counties
While some disagree with wearing a mask, law experts said that being forced to wear one does not trample on people’s rights.
“This type of regulation is legal, constitutional and very, very sensible,” Sharona Hoffman, professor of law and bioethics at Case Western Reserve University told News 5 earlier this week.
Hoffman said people should be willing to mask-up on their own and not be told to do so.
“This should be something that people are very willing to do, not only to protect themselves but also to protect other people,” Hoffman said.
Editor's note: The spelling of “are” instead of “our” and "dont" instead of "don't" and "isnt" instead of "isn't" in a quote above is as the quote reads on the event's Facebook page.
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