Christian activists.
A public park.
Staff tried to shut them down.

$132 million in public money. Public land. Public rules.

Scissortail Park opened in stages between 2019 and 2022, spanning 70 acres in downtown Oklahoma City from the Santa Fe Avenue corridor south to the Oklahoma River. It was funded by MAPS 3 — a voter-approved penny sales tax initiative passed by Oklahoma City residents in 2009, which dedicated $132 million specifically to the park’s construction.

Day-to-day management was assigned to the Scissortail Park Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit operating under a lease and management agreement with the Oklahoma City Economic Development Trust — a government-adjacent public entity. The arrangement is common for large city parks: a nonprofit handles programming and staffing while the public entity retains ownership.

That management structure does not alter the park’s legal character. Scissortail Park is built on public land, paid for by public tax revenue, and open to the general public free of charge. Under settled First Amendment doctrine, it is a public forum. First Amendment protections apply in full. A nonprofit management layer does not give employees the legal authority to prohibit, restrict, or shut down peaceful expression on those grounds.

They come with cameras, signs, and a First Amendment. That’s the whole operation.

Abolitionists Rising is an Oklahoma-based anti-abortion organization founded by T. Russell Hunter, an Oklahoma University history graduate. The group advocates for the complete legal abolition of abortion, arguing it should be treated as homicide under state law without exceptions. Their primary tactics are street activism: public witness events, debates, and consciousness-raising at parks, festivals, and other public spaces.

The group’s approach is built around First Amendment activity. They bring signs, literature, cameras, and livestreaming equipment. They document every interaction in the field — and have built a YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers by publishing those encounters, including confrontations where officials or bystanders attempt to stop their activities.

The Scissortail Park incident was not the first time the group encountered resistance. In 2023, a former police officer in Wichita, Kansas physically confronted members during a public event — knocking over a camera and allegedly injuring one of the activists. That footage was also published and went viral. The pattern is documented: when Abolitionists Rising shows up, someone often tries to make them leave. The camera is always running.

February 17, 2024. Russell and the team arrived. The employees tried everything.

On February 17, 2024, T. Russell Hunter and a team from Abolitionists Rising arrived at Scissortail Park in downtown Oklahoma City to exercise their First Amendment rights on what is — by every legal definition — public property. They brought signs and cameras. They were there to speak, witness, and document.

Scissortail Park Foundation employees attempted to stop them. According to the group’s published description of events, staff members “tried everything they could” to prevent Russell and his team from expressing their First Amendment rights on the park grounds. The interactions were captured in full on video, which Abolitionists Rising published to YouTube the same day.

The video accumulated 839,705 views — a significant audience for a civil liberties incident at a city park that received no mainstream news coverage at the time. The footage circulated widely in First Amendment and pro-life advocacy communities online, building public pressure on Scissortail Park Foundation leadership to respond.

“Employees at this park in OKC beclowned themselves as they tried everything they could to stop Russell and the team from expressing our First Amendment rights on public property.”

Abolitionists Rising — YouTube video description, February 17, 2024

Viral video. Public pressure. The park admitted it. In writing.

After the video went viral, Scissortail Park Foundation issued a public statement acknowledging that its employees had acted improperly and that the park had taken formal corrective action. The statement required no lawsuit, no regulatory finding, no court order. The documented video record was sufficient.

“Corrective action has been taken with the employees involved, and additional First Amendment training including how to properly interact with individuals and groups expressing these rights in public spaces has been provided to staff.”

Scissortail Park Foundation — Official public statement following the February 2024 incident

The statement is significant in what it concedes: that employees had acted in a manner that warranted discipline; that the park did not previously have adequate First Amendment training for staff; and that individuals and groups exercising constitutional rights in a public space are entitled to do so without interference from park employees. The foundation did not dispute the substance of the video, contest the group’s account of events, or claim its employees had acted within their authority.

Same park. “No Kings” anti-Trump march. 1,000+ people. Zero interference.

In June 2025 — approximately 16 months after the Abolitionists Rising incident — Scissortail Park served as the staging ground for an anti-Trump “No Kings” protest that drew more than 1,000 attendees. The march proceeded from the park to Oklahoma City Hall. Park employees did not attempt to stop or restrict the event. No corrective action statements were issued. No First Amendment training was cited as a reason participants were allowed to proceed.

The same park also hosted Oklahoma City PrideFest in June 2025 — where Abolitionists Rising, the same group that was targeted in February 2024, returned to conduct a peaceful counter-protest alongside other Christian activists. No suppression of that event by park employees was reported.

The juxtaposition is not subtle. In February 2024, a small group of Christian anti-abortion activists arrived at Scissortail Park and were confronted by park employees who tried to remove them. In June 2025, more than 1,000 anti-Trump protesters used the same park as a staging ground for a march through downtown Oklahoma City — without incident. The park’s employees treated political expression differently depending on who was doing the expressing. The video made that pattern indefensible.

The camera was rolling. The park had no answer for that.

The legal facts of this case are not complicated. Scissortail Park is a public forum: publicly funded, publicly owned, and managed under a government-adjacent trust. No management structure — nonprofit or otherwise — overrides the First Amendment on that ground. The employees who confronted T. Russell Hunter and Abolitionists Rising on February 17, 2024 had no legal authority to stop them, restrict them, or demand they leave. Their actions were a First Amendment violation on public property.

What made the outcome different from most such incidents was the camera. Abolitionists Rising documented every minute. The footage accumulated nearly 840,000 views. Faced with a documented, viral record of its employees behaving unlawfully, the Scissortail Park Foundation did what institutions rarely do voluntarily: it publicly admitted wrongdoing, disciplined the staff involved, and ordered mandatory First Amendment training for its entire staff.

The question the incident leaves open is what happens when the camera is not rolling. If park employees required mandatory First Amendment retraining after this incident, the implication is that the park had not previously trained staff to respect constitutional rights in a public space. How many interactions occurred before February 17, 2024 without a camera present? The park has not addressed that question.