Who's Really Behind The Push To Make Protesting A Felony?

If it seems like increasingly folks are protesting lately — and that protest groups are getting younger — you’re not imagining things: Residents of the United States between the ages of 18 and 30 are more likely to have attended a protest since 2016 than any other demographic. So the news that protesting is becoming more and more criminalized across the nation is especially chilling for young people who wish to prepare their voices heard.


As of this writing, a total of 100 protest-related bills have been believed by 35 states since November 2016, 16 of which have been enacted with another 26 pending. The harshest among them target environmental activists protesting “critical infrastructure” assignments like pipelines, power flowers, and water treatment sites.


Louisiana, as an example, passed one of the severest penalties last August with HB 727, which right now deems it a felony to be on a pipeline site at all, without consideration of intent, punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a $1000 fine. (Doing so can circumnavigate the reality that a person’s right to protest is protected by the First Amendment.) The law, written by the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, is so vague that a new lawsuit argues landowners who own property with a pipeline running through it aren’t sure if they’re breaking the law.


Such legislation is a rising trend that Elly Page at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law has been tracking ever since Donald Trump was elected president.


Page has found two types of protest suppression laws are being put forth more often by lawmakers. Some raise the stakes on peaceful, nondestructive activity by protestors who physically assemble in public and private places alike; other laws aim to prepare new criminal offenses for conduct that had not been penalized to such an extent, like trespassing (which is often believed a misdemeanor). Both have a chilling effect on the public’s inclination to participate in one of the most available forms of political engagement.


“This is unprecedented. The past couple years there has been a noticeable change from the sort of legislation being proposed,” she told MTV News. “The expenses themselves and the way lawmakers talk about protest is contributing to a harmful narrative that protestors are criminals and are all unruly and destructive, undermining people’s belief in the significance of a First Amendment right to peaceful assembly.”


Cindy Spoon, a 28-year-old activist with the L’eau Est La Vie camp (“Water is Life” in French), was among the opening people to be charged under Louisiana’s HB 727 law while protesting the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, which stretches for 163 miles in Louisiana and transports oil from the Dakota Access Pipeline to the Gold Coast refineries. The categorize had noticed a legal loophole in which activists stayed within their rights kayaking on a public waterway in the Atchafalaya Basin near the pipeline, successfully shutting down construction with their presence. As Spoon remembers, the corporation, Energy Transfer Partners, became frustrated with that workaround. The organization refused to issue comment to MTV News.


“The next day, me and another person were in a kayak with each other near the site and right away we were arrested by private security,” she mentioned, identifying the guards as off-duty officers from the Louisiana Department of Corrections, whose contract with the pipeline ended shortly soon following the incident. “They tied my hands and took us off our boats and dragged us and put us on the easement which is where the state police came.” Whenever reached for comment, the Department of Corrections mentioned that their off-duty officers work independently of the department. Directed to Energy Transfer Partners and sheriff's department; MTV News was directed to both Energy Transfer Partners and the St. Martin Parish sheriff’s department for further comment.)


The Intercept notes that more than 12 people have been charged thus far; for her part, Spoon says she is now facing up to five years in prison.


She plans to fight the costs, noting, “I think it’s key to highlight that what I was doing was legal in public waterways, doing a recreational activity.”


The Louisiana law that Spoon has been charged with is based on a key infrastructure model bill drafted by the Koch Brothers-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a think tank that writes sample laws for conservative interests. Per the Texas Observer, Texas is about to sign a similar ALEC-inspired bill which would charge protestors with a $100,000 fine, a felony prison sentence of ten years, and up to $1 million for any business that may have supported their presence on site.


According to Jennifer K. Falcon, the campaign manager for the community of Native Nations, the passage of such a bill “would give us pause for sure.”


The Texas-based nonprofit is operated by Native people advocating for the Earth and Indigenous culture; their work includes certain organizing actions. “We’re a tiny corporation so the bill in Texas adding on a $1 million fine will certainly affect groups like ours who could be ready to support a camp,” Falcon added.


She noted that this recent insurgence of environmentally-targeted protest repression has roots preceding the 2016 election. From early 2016 to 2017, Energy Transfer Partners were made to navigate a massive protest from the Standing Rock action against its Dakota Access pipeline. (The DAPL traverses over 1,000 miles through numerous states beginning from North and South Dakota, two states which have since enacted a high collection of protest suppression laws.) The business engaged in a massive counter-protest effort that including hiring the private firm TigerSwan, known for its ex-military operators, to spy on protestors’ camps and work with militarized police forces. Violent clashes occurred as a result of the standoff between protestors and the pipeline interests; several people faced arrest, while one protestor was left blind in one eye.


This struggle between the interests of a rich business and the masses isn't new, though the thematic targets have changed over generations. While today environmental activism is being singled out, the ruling class in decades past focused on labor unions, and before that the free speech of Communists, according to David S. Meyer, professor of sociology at the University of California Irvine and author of Politics of Protest: Social Movements In the
U.S..


“Whenever someone in power feels threatened by whichever cause is out there, they wish to use the power of the state and police to crack down,” Meyer told MTV News. “Companies used have the ability to plan on the government to protect them and to pay for protection.” He points to Pinkerton, a private security firm that has been accused of beating up protestors and facilitating strike-breakers into workplaces, as a well-known example of private muscle-for-hire for the wealthy.


Several protestors often prepare for the worst before heading out into the streets, often by writing critical phone numbers on their arms in the scenario of arrest, yet they’re also able to hold police accountable by amplifying instances of excessive force. So as a substitute opposed to beating up the masses with impunity, the powers that have begun to be able to see protest suppression laws as an attractive and less-actionable tool of political militarization to advance private interests.


Accordingly, costs that raise the penalty for blocking traffic targeted at public demonstrations that take place in public spaces — often for social justice causes —  have become more and more typical and give enhanced power to law enforcement. Last year, West Virginia passed HB 4618, which eliminates police liability for deaths and requires bystanders to assist in the dispersal of audiences. If they reject, they’ll be deemed a “rioter” and subject to “any means” needed by the authorities to disperse against the law assemblies.


According to Page, the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law believes that such laws “were suggested in response to the Black Lives Matter protests. In some cases it was explicitly clear that [the legislation] was in response to protest that took place in the streets.”


Yet activists aren’t about to take that inequity lying down. The strongest form of civic and political engagement obtainable to people without other means has habitually been precarious, however they’re ready to take that risk categorize in attempt to stand up for what they believe in. What they aren’t ready to do is let the government to play with a handicap, just because those in power don’t like what the people have to say.


“I have organized legally by means system and by way of the streams that are available,” Spoon added, “but you visualize over and over again that the legislators are prepared to change the rules.”