The city of Albuquerque postponed its Martin Luther King Jr. march due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases, while other events have been able to continue with restrictions.
Albuquerque and New Mexico’s MLK State Commission made the postponement announcement on Friday, a day before the planned march.
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Those who planned on participating in the march said they only learned of its postponement after seeing it on the news and questioned why other events were able to continue.
“They didn’t cancel a football game,” Reverend Darnell Smith told KOAT-TV. “They have one of the biggest events in the city downtown. They’re holding all these events inside, and nobody’s canceled them, but we want to do an outdoor event, and they cancel us.”
Comic Con, a major indoor event, returned to Albuquerque from Friday to Sunday with organizers allowing the event to go on with precautions. Capacity was cut in half while masks and temperature checks were required, the station reported.
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan-Grisham had asked all event organizers to limit attendance or postpone events as infections from the omicron variant continue to increase.
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Though the in-person march was postponed “out of an abundance of caution,” Commission Executive Director Leonard Waites said, a Federal Emergency Management Agency bus was still made available at the Civic Plaza to administer vaccines and on-site COVID-19 testing.
No new date for the march was announced.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
