>>"Oh, I don't know if we can make masks required at our event... how would we enforce it? What if people don't have a mask? I live in a red state. What if the venue doesn't allow it. It sounds too hard etc etc etc"
Ok people so last weekend I tabled at a zine fest in Nebraska with like 25 vendors. The state is overwhelmingly Trump country and Omaha has a Republican asshole mayor and a Republican asshole congressperson. The organizing crew was 4 people. They bought a bunch of kn95s cheap in bulk. They put masks required on all their promo materials. They rotated duties so there was always one person standing at the door to the pertinent area next to the welcome table (the rest of the building did not require masking) and simply handed masks to anyone coming in who wasn't already wearing one.
The event lasted 5 hours and was attended by hundreds of people. In my estimation, 99%+ of people were masked up. It was busy the entire time. I made a lot of buxx and made a lot of good connections. It was rad. A lot of people expressed their appreciation for the masking, and I personally heard no complaints. Shoutout Alt Pub Omaha.
Your crew can easily do this too.
@riotmuffin I have had the exact same experience with 'proactively handing out masks' at a large (public, open) protest.
We stationed a few volunteers (I was one of them) at the different entry paths who just handed out a mask to everyone passing by without any further conversation or instruction, and almost everyone masked up.
I think I've had like two people make an explicit anti-mask comment (out of hundreds) and I just responded with "that is your choice" and they looked slightly confused for a moment and just walked away.
Across all volunteers, there were zero incidents of violence or even serious conflict, at an event with thousands attending.
