Protesters have camped for months at Tennessee's Capitol. So lawmakers made it a felony.
Source: Washington Post
For 61 straight days, protesters have camped outside the Tennessee Capitol in Nashville, demanding a meeting with the governor to discuss racial inequality and police brutality.
On Wednesday, the GOP-dominated legislature responded — by passing a bill making camping on state property, including the Capitol grounds, a felony.
The bill’s backers described the legislation, which also stiffens penalties for protesters who spit on police, block streets and disrupt meetings, as a necessary tool to battle violent demonstrations.
“It is to prevent what has happened in other cities like Portland and Washington, D.C.,” Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R) said Wednesday after the measure passed. “If people … knowingly thumb their nose at authority and don’t do what authorities have requested they do, they should be charged with a serious crime."
But protesters disputed claims that they’ve been violent. When a Democratic lawmaker asked during a Wednesday debate on the bill whether anyone has been injured at the Capitol during the weeks of protests, no one produced an example.
“There was no violent behavior by the protesters, but there was violence by the state troopers who dragged us down the Capitol stairs,” protest organizer Justin Jones, 24, told The Washington Post. “This is all about criminalizing peaceful protesting.”
Read more: ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/13/tennessee-camping-felony-capitol/#click=https://t.co/YGe3PItJ5f
This law is a trial balloon for Republican-run states across the country to abrogate first amendment rights, and to remove occupation as a protest tactic. It will, of course, be challenged. But that will require protestors to purposefully violate the newly defined 'camping' on state grounds prohibition and the class E felony for chalking on state grounds, get arrested and then bring suit against the state, where the law will be declared unconstitutional. It'll be hard work too, removing the felony charge, so that they can vote again. The process could take a couple of years, a classic case of justice delayed justice denied. In the near-term, the homeless are likely to be the first victimized by this law.
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