Were it not for a little girl in a light blue T-shirt reading from a single sheet of white paper, Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken may not have betrayed more than half a million American dead and broken a private promise to support a continued mask mandate at Tuesday evening’s city council meeting.
“We’re about seven months into this mask game and there’s probably not a lot anyone’s going to say that’s going to be something we haven’t heard before,” TenHaken said as he invited members of the public to address the council in advance of the vote.
A tiny figure stepped up to the wooden lectern.
“Go ahead, young lady,” TenHaken said. “Good evening.”
“Hi, my name is Lily Kuiken,” the girl began with a calm beyond her years. “I am 9 years old and in third grade. I am here to talk about how I get bullied on the bus and at school because I don’t wear a mask.”
TenHaken sat facing her at the center of eight council members arrayed in a semicircle. They included Rick Kylie, who was prepared to vote in favor of continuing the mandate and had asked TenHaken before the meeting to guarantee he would break any tie in its favor. TenHaken had given his word that he would. He had broken a tie in favor of the original mandate back in November at the urging of senior health officials. Representatives of the area’s two largest health systems were present on Tuesday to voice similar support for extending the mandate.
But here was Lily, resting her fingertips on the lectern’s edge with nary a fidget as she read her statement.
“First they called me an a-hole and said my parents don’t care about me,” Lily continued. “Then they called me names like dumb and stupid. Also my school librarian doesn’t let me sit around the room while others that do have a mask get to. Also, I have lost some friends over this pandemic and I don’t like this at all.”
She raised both hands and simultaneously tucked her hair behind her ears.
“And my mom, brother, and I got kicked out of my favorite store, Claire’s, because we didn’t wear masks.”
Her mother, 27-year-old Alexis Kuiken, now stood to her right with an air of certainty to match her daughter’s calm.
“So for me, it is unfair, just annoying that they get to do things that I don’t,” Lily said of the youngsters who wear masks. “Thank you for letting me talk.”
“Thank you, kiddo,” TenHaken said.
The mother then took a turn to speak.
“She wrote that speech all by herself, by the way, and I did very little editing for her,” Alexis Kuiken said of Lily. “I am very proud of her courage and mental strength for being able to withstand the bullying and harassment she has received over the past several months while also not returning that behavior, and for speaking tonight.”
The mother went on, “There are many more examples she could share but these were the ones that stood out to her most. And as far as going to Claire’s, only the one employee was in the store. So we totally could have stayed six feet away.”
She also totally could have told her daughter to wear a mask in keeping with the mandate imposed five months before by the city council.
“So how does it feel to know that elementary-age children are being bullied for not wearing a mask per their parents’ instructions?” she asked. “This ordinance helps fuel that. What are parents doing that their kids are talking like this? My kid would never say those horrible things to a pro-masker.”
Lily’s few moments at the lectern suggested this was true.
“And if she did, there would be negative consequences,” the mother added.
That seemed equally true. Alexis Kuiken went on, “With this mandate you are making people feel entitled to think they are better than other people and look down on us and harass us just for making a different decision by simply looking out for our family’s mental and physical health.”
The problem is she and her fellow anti-maskers are not just making a different decision. They are endangering others in a time of national emergency.
“You say you don’t want division,” she said. “This is helping cause division and hostility.”
She suggested that many who wear masks only do so to avoid harassment.
“I don’t think for most that this is about being safe anymore. It’s about being complacent in order to avoid conflict and ridicule. It’s like the snitches in the Dr. Seuss book. They wear their masks like the gold star so they can feel like they’re better than everyone else.”
She refrained from any reference to the controversy over race-tinged images in some of the Dr. Seuss books.
“Someone else I know went to the Walmart on 85th and Louise with their kids, and over the intercom system someone announced a description of them, saying that they weren’t wearing a mask so they could hunt them down and have security remove them from the building,” she said. “This is insanity.”
Others, no doubt including most if not all ICU doctors and nurses, would call it safety and suggest the insanity was not wearing a mask in an indoor public place.
“Just one example of something that someone said about me on Facebook,” she continued. “They said, and I’m reading this verbatim, so pardon what I’m saying here, but, ‘I’ve had my go around with this Alexis Kuiken, and this bitch needs to be slapped hard enough to snap her self-righteous, not caring ass back into reality. I guarantee you this much, not one word you said had made it into that thick-headed bitch’s narrow-minded, uncaring soul because I believe she has no soul, just a shell of a person.’”
Pro-maskers clearly have some Neanderthal-ism of their own. The daughter’s eyes shifted and obvious discomfort rippled through her calm face, though likely less because of the language and more what had been posted about her mother.
“Obviously this person has made zero effort to get to know me,” the mother said.
The mother describes herself on her Facebook page as a “Christ-follower, conservative, and young-earth creationist.” The profile picture is of her and her husband, Jason Kuiken, along with an American flag and the words “Trump Pence.”
“This is all about fear,” she continued. “I choose faith over fear. There’s a big difference between walking into the middle of a highway and expecting not to get killed and going out without a mask for a virus with a 99 percent survival rate.”
Again she seemed either not to grasp or not to care that masks are about protecting others as well as just yourself.
“Anyone who wants to wear a mask can,” she went on. “Why do their rights outweigh mine? They can wear a mask. They can stay home.”
But wearing a mask is not sure protection against those who do not. And some vulnerable people need to get out for essentials such as food.
“Most people don’t really care,” she continued. “They just don’t want to be treated like my family is for not wearing one.”
She was saying that the majority of those who wear masks do so to avoid ridicule rather than to prevent infecting those around them.
“When this ordinance first began, I tried my best to stay at least six feet away from others at the grocery store,” she went on. “It was impossible if it was busy, and you know what? They didn’t even see that I was trying to be courteous, because I actually do care about other people and try to respect their choices even if I disagree.”
She sounded still aggrieved that her masked fellow shoppers failed to see her courtesy and caring.
“Person after person would pass and not see that I was patiently waiting for them to move,” she added. “When people have a mask on they think they’re invincible, and most of them don’t even try to stay away from me.”
She spoke of the fellow anti-maskers who had come to the hearing. The chairs had been socially distanced when they arrived. But the anti-maskers had arranged them to pre-pandemic spacing, signaling their unity as well as an indifference to proven precautions.
“We stand united,” she declared.
She turned more emphatic as she spoke for the group.
“Let us be clear. We are done. We are so done. And so is North Dakota, Texas, Mississippi, Iowa, Montana. They are lifting their mandates. And then Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and us here in South Dakota, never had one at the state level.”
She rightly noted that the hospitalization rate has decreased, though she failed to acknowledge this was likely due in part to masks.
“So it’s time to stop,” she said. “All this mandate has done is embolden people to hate and to completely disregard others if they have a different opinion. They hide behind a mandate to belittle and harass people. People think that they are more righteous and that they care more about others so that they think they can attack people like us. Please vote ‘No’ on the mass mandate extension. Thank you.”
“All right, the mayor said. “Thank you.”
The mother had said little that had not been said often before, and variations of it were offered by the anti-maskers who followed her to the lectern. The health-care system representatives offered brief but clear statements in favor of the mandate.
Then the council voted and it was a 4-4 tie.
“So that puts it onto me,” the mayor said. “I obviously was hoping not to get in this position.”
He noted that the current mask mandate was only in effect until vaccinations in Sioux Falls reached a certain level.
“We’re at the five-yard line,” he said. “If this would pass we would only probably have this mandate on the books for maybe a couple weeks.”
He suggested that nobody was so done when it comes to the mask issue than the council members and himself. He then spoke to Lily and her mother and the other anti-mask speakers who reported being harassed.
“I feel bad for those of you who had bad experiences on this in our community and hatred and vitriol, and I’d like to think it was just the masks,” he said. “But it’s symptomatic of a larger dialogue, a chasm we have in our community right now… It’s social justice. It’s the presidential election. It’s the way we talk to each other. It’s social media. It’s all these things. And if you think that mandating or not mandating a piece of cloth will all of a sudden return us to civil dialogue, that’s not going to happen.”
He allowed, “I’m going to have some damage repair to do based on my vote here either way because of how emotional this is.”
But before he made his decision known he offered an apology to Rick Kylie, who had just voted for the extension with the mayor’s promise to watch his back.
“I am going to vote differently than we discussed, Council Member Kylie,” the mayor said. “And I am going to need to ask for some grace and forgiveness.”
He then offered another apology, to the health system officials.
“They’ve been our allies in this and I am not an expert,” he said. “I have relied so heavily on these guys. I mean, they have been incredible allies and they both support masking. They say masking helps, it helps mitigate the spread and helps slow the spread, and they are right.”
The question was what could have compelled him to break his promise to Kylie and go against proven medical advice in the midst of the pandemic. A significant part of it must have been that first person at the lectern, the tiny figure in the light blue T-shirt who said things he had not heard before, the one who so touched him that he called her “kiddo.”
“I am going to be voting against this tonight, and this item will end up failing 5-to-4,” he said. “I would ask that you don’t applaud because there’s nothing happy about this. This is not good.”
He continued, “Based on what I feel is best for our community right now, I go against my word. And I’m doing that right now. You’re watching it play out and it’s very tough.”
He said he had one more thing to say before the council moved on to other business.
“We need to start being kind to people. We need to stop dividing our community over political affiliations, over religious affiliations, over who won the election, over the efficacy of masks, over these wedge issues.”
He had only one immediate prediction.
“I’m going to have a hard time sleeping tonight,” he said.
He then called to the council, “Next item, please. Please move on to the next item.”
The council took up a matter involving a single family home and 1.95 acres adjoining the city public safety training facility.
Lily and her mother departed and returned to their lives, where they will no longer be subject to a mask mandate. The significance of the vote where a little girl was surely a factor will be translated into infection, hospitalization, and death rates in the days to come.
