It's an idea that for
several years has been swirling about in conservative stink tanks.
That it, to make protest illegal. It has its roots in American
jurisprudence when decades ago the courts decided that the mall
parking lot was private property and, therefore, off limits to not
only protests but union picket lines. The International Association
of American Stagehand Employees, which represented America's theater
projectionists among others, found that their ability to picket a
theater in order to take their message to the community circumscribed
for they found themselves forced by the police power of the state to
set up such lines not in front of the place of business but out on
the street. Stage one in the movement to proscribe protest—in
this case the protest of working conditions.
Warp Factor II, Sulu: Now
comes the State of Tennessee with stage 2 in the process. You know,
Tennessee, sight of the famous Scopes Trial, defender of creationism,
citadel of ignorance. News comes that the Republican governor of
Tennessee has signed into law a measure passed by an equally
Republican legislature that makes it a felony for anyone to protest
on state property. A felony conviction strips one of the subsequent
right to vote. So one's civil rights are serially violated, first
the right of free speech and expression, the right of peaceable
assembly, then to compound the mischief, the right to exercise the
franchise.
There are those on the
idiot wrong who would go even further making it a felony to 'disrupt
commerce' by marching down main street, picketing a place of
business, occupying a commercial center in order to voice protest, a
menacing prospect now given legal sanction as it applies to public
buildings. The foundations of a fascist state are being assembled
before our very eyes and in broad daylight.
Flush this turd, November
3rd.
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