Group Holds Rolling Rally, Wants Oklahomans Back to Work by May 1

A group of Oklahomans wants businesses to reopen by May 1, so people can get back to work.

The group rallied Monday outside Tulsa City Hall in their cars.

Tulsa Police estimated 40 vehicles drove around the block for an hour, honking and demanding the government allow businesses to reopen.  

"I don't need the government to feed me. I don't need the government to house me. I wanna do that myself,” Holly Egnel said.

Engel said she was laid off from a Tulsa trucking company two weeks ago.

"Crippling somebody economically is just as detrimental as somebody that's been crippled by an illness. One doesn't have more value over the other,” she said.

Organizers of "OK Back 2 Work" want to see businesses open by May 1, which is next Friday.

"Because May 1st it will have been about 40 days since we've been shutdown and that's plenty long enough. The numbers don't justify staying, keeping everything shut down,” Ronda Vuillemont-Smith said. She said she was an organizer of the event.

"Oklahoma is not New York. We don't have the numbers that New York has had, in cases,” Lori Gracey, another organizer, said.

Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum acknowledged rallies like this one at Monday’s news conference with city and county officials. 

"I don't blame anybody for being frustrated that businesses are closed. I'm frustrated that businesses are closed. But that alternative that we had in going into this was to have our neighbors potentially dying,” Bynum said.

Not everyone was at the rally for the same reason. Scherre Tucker had this to say:

"My message is just be smart. You ain't a doctor. Don't act like you are. Don't talk like you are,” she said.

While Tucker had an opposing view to the majority at the rally, she drove with participants in the circle around the block. Tulsa Police officers spoke with her, before she drove to a nearby parking lot.

"He said that everybody in here has some kind of a permit and if I’m not with them, and if I’m not permitted, I have to come over here on the corner,” Tucker said.

A Tulsa Police captain said while he was not a part of the conversation with Tucker, no one was required to have a permit to rally Monday, and that any counter protesters were asked to be in a separate area.