Censoring Protest

What else to call what the HuffPost reports under A New Crop Of Anti-Protest Laws Threatens First Amendment Rights:

"Nearly all protests in the U.S. since Floyd’s death have been nonviolent, according to research by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, or ACLED, a nonprofit that tracks political violence. But that hasn’t stemmed the growing legislative backlash.

A Center for Public Integrity review of hundreds of pages of documents and court filings, as well as interviews with advocates, lawyers and First Amendment experts, found the new laws are casting a long shadow. Even as demonstrations for environmental justice and against discrimination, racial injustice and police brutality help propel those issues to the fore of public debate, experts say the push for new statutes carrying harsh sanctions could taint the public’s perception of protests as an important tool for change.

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Proponents of the new statutes, mostly Republicans, say they are meant to maintain public safety and order and deter riots. Peaceful, law-abiding demonstrators, they say, have nothing to fear.

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 "For example, he said, a Florida law passed earlier this year defines rioting to include participating in a "violent public disturbance" resulting in "imminent danger of injury to another person or damage to property." The language is confusing, he said, because it suggests it takes only imminent danger, rather than actual harm, to trigger the statute."

To what purpose does all this censorship serve other making citizens submissive to the power of a narrow clique grasping at retaining the power protecting their narrow interests?

sch

12/22/21