Protesting injustice is your sacred right as an American (via latimesopinion)
abridging the freedom of speech or the rights of the people to peaceably assemble or “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” These crucial 1st Amendment protections also limit state government action, thanks to the 14th Amendment, and embody essential values that created and have sustained this nation: People can, should and will protest against perceived injustice.
One such instance followed the police killing of a young African American man named Jamar Clark in November 2015. Turned back from a planned protest at a shopping mall, demonstrators temporarily disrupted traffic at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport.Minnesota lawmakers responded with a bill to punish traffic obstruction with up to a year in prison — an astonishingly excessive term far out of proportion to the offense.
“Under such statutes,” PEN reports, “a protester who merely crosses onto land hosting a pipeline could be held criminally liable.” That would have categorized protesters against the brutal killing of George Floyd as rioters, not because of any act they committed, but because they expressed their dissent at the same time or in the same place as violent lawbreakers.
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