DRAPER – When protesters flooded Salt Lake City’s streets in May 2020, about 600 members of the Utah National Guard showed up to help local police.
It was the National Guard’s biggest deployment to a demonstration in recent memory, confirmed Noe Vazquez, deputy chief of staff for plans, operations and training. But it was far from the first time its troops responded in force to civil unrest.
It has been doing just that for over 100 years, including at a labor uprising in 1896 and coal strikes in the 1920s…