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18 January 21
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RSN: Mort Rosenblum | Do-It-Yourself Democracy
Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
Rosenblum writes: "Americans who take democracy for granted need to understand how fragile it can be."
UCSON – Chris Christie, one of Donald Trump’s countless discarded Kleenexes, declared the obvious. “If insurrection isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.” Liz Cheney, whose hardline Republican roots run deep, echoed that in stirring terms.
The Capitol assault was no bozo Bastille. America called 911, and no one came. “We came close to half the House nearly dying,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said afterward. She feared Republican colleagues would direct insurgents to Democrats’ hideouts.
When the teargas cleared and Congress resumed certifying votes, Cheney declared: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
Everything, she said, was Trump’s doing: “[He] summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.”
Yet only a handful a Republicans voted to impeach. Others aimed their wrath at Cheney, not Trump, and sought to remove her as their caucus chair. Polls show that two-thirds of Americans who voted for reelection would do it again.
Ten days later, the enormity of it is sinking in. At one point, The Washington Post reported, a group chanting “Hang Mike Pence” missed seeing the vice president by 60 seconds as the Secret Service spirited him away.
The world watched for hours as thousands overran police, killing one and battering others in a superpower that spends $720 billion a year on “defense.” When the National Guard finally moved in, most had gone, high-fiving and plotting their next move.
Top level officials declined to brief the nation, but reporters pieced together what happened. Mayor Muriel Bowser wanted to protect the Capitol but could only send local police. In Washington, the Pentagon commands the National Guard. Troops were deployed to direct traffic and in the Metro.
Governors of nearby states made urgent, repeated calls to offer Guard units that could have blocked access to the Capitol and arrested assault leaders in flagrante while evidence was fresh, with firsthand witnesses. Generals declined, wary of “the optics.”
Those “optics” will be far worse on Wednesday to a stunned world. America, which symbolized open, unassailable democracy, plans to inaugurate a president shielded by 21,000 armed troops and barricades that make Washington look like Baghdad in 2003.
The institutions held firm, and a second impeachment has a strong chance of barring Trump from public office. But last week presaged a smoldering civil war, likely to flare out of control if enough citizens do not stamp out the embers.
I keep flashing back to the presidential inauguration I covered in 1964 on a break from school to work at the Caracas Daily Journal. Steeped in Latin-America history, with its constant coups and endemic corruption, I was ready for anything.
Venezuela’s first democratic succession was a textbook triumph. Unguarded, Raúl Leoni addressed cheering masses from the Miraflores Palace balcony. A few of us reporters who slipped out behind him worried about snipers. He didn’t.
For mostly internal reasons but also because of the world around it, Venezuela is what it is today. Americans who take democracy for granted need to understand how fragile it can be.
Our public schools, crippled over decades, have produced a cohort of ignoramuses who believe big lies if repeated with crowd-stirring bombast. An entrenched oligarchy exploits this to amass fortunes. Mitch McConnell’s approach to party fealty has been the Republican norm since 2007.
Moronic letters to newspapers absolve Trump and his militias of any blame. One in the Tucson daily called Twitter an anti-conservative “master of deceit” and excoriated other platforms for blocking Parler, which the writer called a legitimate outlet for dissent.
Here are a few recent Parler posts:
- “We need to act like our forefathers and Kill Black and Jewish people (and) Leave no survivors or victims.”
- “After the firing squads with the politicians the teachers are next.”
- “Shoot the police that protect these shitbag senators and then make the senator grovel a bit before capping they ass.”
One Parler post, claiming plans were afoot for a “newsworthy event,” said on Jan. 20 that patriots should start “systematicly” assassinating liberal leaders, liberal activists, BLM leaders and supporters, mainstream media anchors, correspondents and Antifa.
That Tucson letter-writer asserted that Democrats want a one-party dictatorship, ending with a line that reflected our larger challenge: “The American people are forced to learn ‘globalism’ to survive.” That is, we have to live in the real world.
Previous Mort Reports detail worsening crises beyond our borders while America is occupied by trying not to tear itself apart. Republican legislators displayed paralyzing ignorance of global complexities during the House impeachment debate.
Deadly pathogens are the new normal. Climatic calamity outstrips earlier dire predictions. China is muscling us aside. Russia cites America to pronounce democracy dead. Terrorist groups thrive. The “Abraham Accords,” hardly Middle East peace, deepens enmity that imperils Israel. North Korea and Iran now pose far greater threats.
First ridiculed, then widely despised, America has lost its ability to set moral standards in a world that needs them more by the month.
Faced with this, Joe Biden must restore a collapsed economy, halt a plague that kills 4,000 people a day, and quell an insurgency as overworked federal agents hunt down people who should have been arrested when they breached the Capitol perimeter.
The French do a lot of things wrong, but riot police have learned since 1968 how to keep demonstrations from exploding out of control. For “optics,” they hang back out of sight. But at the first sign of violence, they swarm in and herd agitators into paddy wagons.
Their intelligence misses some impending threats. France takes liberté seriously and resists locking up people for what they might do before they do it. But they have an advantage. France’s hunters keep arms but not assault rifles that blast game to smithereens.
In America, a hodgepodge of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies is beyond control. Egged on by Trump, murderous mavericks within their ranks endanger not only citizens but also the thumping majority of good cops trying to do their jobs.
A day before the assault, insurgent leaders toured the Capitol with helpful uniformed police pointing out its warren of chambers and passageways to goons in Halloween getup who were plainly not run-of-the-mill tourists.
A widely circulated photo shows one Capitol cop shepherding a small group of thuggish-looking costumed louts, including that deviant from Phoenix in buffalo horns and body paint. We don’t know why, but Democratic legislators promise to find out.
The menace was clear. Before the Jan. 6 session to confirm the vote, one Democrat told her husband where to find her will. One told his kids not to watch from the gallery. Another wore sneakers. Body armor is a legitimate expense for members of Congress.
Evan Osnos captured the mood in The New Yorker. Since 9/11, he noted, the Capitol has been ringed with security, but last Wednesday any sense of control was gone. A few excerpts:
“The mob quickly overwhelmed the police, broke windows, and forced open doors … They rummaged through drawers and brandished their loot for photographers. A man in a wool Trump hat, with a pom-pom on it, and a rictus of glee, carried off a carved wooden podium bearing the seal of the Speaker of the House …
“I introduced myself to a hopped-up guy walking away from the Senate side of the Capitol, and he said, ‘The New Yorker? Fucking enemy of the people. Why don’t I smash you in your fucking head?’ He made an effort to draw a crowd: ‘Right there in the blue mask! Enemy of the fucking people!’ But the people had other things on their minds, and nobody bothered to join in. Five years after the Trump era began, a physical assault on American democracy felt both shocking and inevitable — a culmination of everything that had been building since 2015.”
True, it is a different America. It is now politically charged to say “on both sides” but some new legislators, Democrats as well as Republicans, overdo rhetoric. Democracy needs decorum and compromise. But simple fiery speech is different from rebellion.
Take Rep. Lauren Boebert, 34, who packs a sidearm, as waitresses and most customers do at her Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado. She supports QAnon and insurrection. Her campaign posters were emblazoned: “FREEDOM.” Roger Cohen tried to interview her for The New York Times, but she had him ejected from the café.
“That’s what freedom may look like in a second Trump term,” he wrote, “more the my-way-or-the-highway muzzle of a Glock than the liberty enshrined by the Constitution and the rule of law.”
Boebert is still trying. She declared Jan. 6 would be “the Republicans’ 1776” and told the House: “Members who … accept the results of this concentrated, coordinated, partisan effort by Democrats — where every fraudulent vote canceled out the vote of an honest American — have sided with the extremist left.” She promises to demand Biden’s impeachment on Jan. 21.
Six days later, she railed at Capitol police who tried to search her bag when her Glock set off an alarm. She stormed past the metal detector along with several other Republicans. Screening, she said, was just another political stunt by Nancy Pelosi.
As any veteran diplomat or correspondent can attest, this sort of blind zealotry is deadly to democracy if unchecked. As the rule of law wanes, institutions crumble. Faithless legislators and public servants need to be hounded out of office — fast.
The 14th Amendment is clear: senators, representatives or other public servants who swear an oath cannot hold any office if they “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against [the United States] or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
On Jan. 6, Republicans repeatedly evoked Abraham Lincoln despite flouting the principles of his Grand Old Party. They called for unity and forgiveness to move forward as they said old Honest Abe would have counseled.
We don’t know how Lincoln might have dealt with today’s crippling impasse. While he sat watching a play, a do-it-yourself dissident with a pistol sneaked up and altered the course of history, as a lynch mob tried to do last week.
Trump’s creeping coup d’état fizzled. Prosecutors circle like sharks as his business empire tanks. Lenders and funders shun him. Twitter, along with other social media, has muzzled him. But his cultists, armed and crazed, aren’t going away.
The shock of last week’s insurrection could jolt America back towards sanity. If not, there is no shortage of wannabe authoritarians eager for a shot at elections in 2024.
Chris Christie chastised Obama in 2011 for saying Republicans thwarted him at every turn: “I mean, cry me a river. Lead and do your job.” Obama finally did with executive orders. That set a precedent for Trump’s fiat by tweet. And here we are today.
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
President Donald Trump. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
Trump to Issue Around 100 Pardons and Commutations Tuesday, Sources Say
Jeremy Diamond, Kevin Liptak, Jamie Gangel, Pamela Brown and Kaitlan Collins, CNN
Excerpt: "President Donald Trump is preparing to issue around 100 pardons and commutations on his final full day in office Tuesday."
A scene from the riots at the Capitol last Wednesday. (photo: John Minchillo/AP)
Police Command Structure Crumbled Fast During Capitol Riot
Nomaan Merchant and Colleen Long, Associated Press
Excerpt: "As the rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, many of the police officers had to decide on their own how to fight them off. There was no direction. No plan. And no top leadership."
READ MORE
Nurses and community faith leaders call for the release of prisoners outside the Cook County jail in Chicago, Ill., on April 10, 2020. (photo: Nam Y. Huh/AP)
First in the Union: Illinois Will End Classist and Racist Cash Bail and Regulate Electronic Monitoring
Isaac Scher, The Intercept
Excerpt: "Reformers typically propose predictive algorithms and electronic monitoring as alternatives to money bail. Illinois is different."
ome organizers in Illinois recall getting “laughed out of the room” for supporting the abolition of money bail five years ago. But on January 13, Robert Peters, a longtime advocate for ending cash bail and now a state senator from Chicago, saw his legislative proposal to end money bail pass the General Assembly, along with a comprehensive package of criminal justice reforms written by the state’s Black Caucus. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has strongly indicated that he will sign the bill, which will make Illinois the first state in the country to end a detention system that is demonstrably racist and classist.
Labor groups, abolitionists, and local nonprofits formed a coalition to end money bail shortly after powerful state players derided activists who argued against money bail in court and led organizing drives throughout the state. Their four-year campaign, which brought pressure against the state and gifted them a close alliance with the Black Caucus, made sweeping reforms thinkable. It was the movement for Black lives and the 2020 uprising that made them inevitable.
The reforms, which would go into effect in January 2023, will avoid the most dangerous pitfalls of quietly emerging “alternatives” to money bail: algorithms that predict peoples’ “risk” and detain those given higher scores, and surveillance devices that track people who maintain legal freedom before trial. These powerful tools are already used in a vast patchwork of jurisdictions across the country. Both are opaque and profitable and have gained prominence among bail reformers in places like California, where a failed effort to end money bail last autumn would have mandated prediction and increased surveillance.
In California and elsewhere, reformers have maintained that algorithmic prediction and “electronic monitoring” constitute safe, effective, and just substitutions for money bail. Advocates and experts say the tools are just as racist and classist as the money-bail system. Now, advocates see Illinois’ victory as reason for cautious optimism about the future of pretrial justice in the state and even nationwide. The bill reduces the reach of the criminal legal system, advocates said. They look beyond the money-bail ban, to the legislation’s unprecedented restrictions on an emerging and largely hidden system of prediction and surveillance.
In large swaths of the country, it is impossible to know how many people live with an electronic monitor. James Kilgore, now a leading expert on the surveillance technology, tried to find answers when he was released from an Illinois prison in 2009. He filed information requests with 35 states, but details were sparse. “When I asked for states’ analyses of their electronic monitoring, they said they didn’t have anything like that,” said Kilgore, a media fellow at the political and economic rights group MediaJustice.
MediaJustice researchers do know that monitoring is primarily leveled against poor, Black, and brown people. Surveillance supervisors frequently prevent monitored people from working jobs that have no fixed location, their 2019 report found, which rules out gig work and day labor opportunities. And other rules and restrictions are so vast that some monitored people see guilty pleas as their only escape. “If electronic monitoring had given me more movement, I probably would have fought the case,” one mother said. “My kids were not getting the healing they needed.”
Once the Illinois reform package takes effect, an oversight board will publish quarterly data on counties’ use of monitoring — a basic move toward democratizing information. Electronic monitoring will become a last resort for the courts too. State prosecutors will bear the burden of proving that an accused person should be monitored, both before the person has been surveilled and after 60 days of surveillance. And in a distinctly remarkable step, any time “served” on an electronic monitor will be subtracted from a court sentence. Advocates like Kilgore say that electronic monitoring “is not an alternative to incarceration, but an alternative form of incarceration.” The Illinois legislation implicitly concurs.
All of this is unprecedented in the United States. “Illinois’ reform is the first of its kind in the country to regulate electronic monitoring,” said Kate Weisburd, an associate law professor at George Washington University. Otherwise, “it’s a bit like the Wild West. It’s expanding, and it’s being used with little restraint or limitation.”
The very companies contracted to produce the technology often write the surveillance rules and restrictions that govern monitored peoples’ lives, Weisburd added. “And it’s not just that they’re writing the rules. They also run the programs. They judge whether a violation occurs.”
Private companies outside the bail industry have been angling to profit from incarceration for years. It is paying off, and the ongoing public health crisis has opened up new markets. In his research, Kilgore has found that the Covid-19 pandemic has further normalized the use of big data and surveillance technologies within the criminal legal system. It’s gaining purchase outside the system, too, as general “contact tracing” technology — and then being fed back into carceral sites at greater rates. In Cook County, where Black residents comprise 70 percent of monitored people but 25 percent of the general populace, there were some tepid efforts to get people out of jail in 2020. As of this week, the county jail population is back to its pre-pandemic total. Electronic monitoring is up more than 50 percent.
“We have expanded the footprint of the carceral state,” Kilgore said, “by supplementing cages with technology.”
As with electronic monitoring, algorithmic prediction is gaining popularity in Illinois and around the country. Known as “risk assessment tools,” the predictive instruments crunch hundreds of thousands of data points on prior defendants to predict whether an accused person in front of the court might be rearrested or skip hearings. An algorithm produces a “risk” score and on that basis recommends that an accused person be released before trial — with or without an electronic monitor — or detained. The algorithms are profiling tools for the 21st century: They process arrest histories, convictions, and missed court dates. Some use data on guilty pleas; others account for whether accused people have owned cellphones.
About 1 in 6 Illinois counties use these tools already. Cook County, home to one of the largest jail populations in the country, uses the Public Safety Assessment, an algorithm owned by former Enron trader John Arnold’s “philanthropy” company Arnold Ventures. Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research, an arm of Arnold Ventures, told The Intercept that algorithmic prediction “can play a positive role in a jurisdiction’s efforts to advance fair and equitable pretrial justice” but is not a necessary component of a just pretrial system.
Many players in the Illinois coalition against money bail wanted to see algorithms fully banned. That wasn’t possible. “Systems stakeholders remain extremely committed to risk assessment tools,” said Sharlyn Grace, executive director of the Chicago Community Bond Fund.
And even after money bail is eliminated, individual judges will continue to have vast power in the process. The legislation says that accused people can be detained pretrial if they might willfully flee from prosecution or if they are “a real and present threat to the safety of a specific, identifiable person.” Judges will decide whether those conditions are met, said Colin Doyle, staff attorney at Harvard Law’s Criminal Justice Policy Program. “A lot will depend on how faithfully judges follow the spirit of these reforms.”
But the bill does chip away at judges’ authority by limiting the function of predictive algorithms, whose release-or-detain recommendations some judges use as established fact, not mere suggestion.
When the “Arnold Tool,” as some call it, was brought to Illinois in 2015, “it was a black box,” Grace said. “So were other tools.” The reform will have data about the algorithms published on a regular basis.
And it will not mandate the use of algorithms, a victory for would-be bail reformers everywhere. Months ago, reformers might have looked to California’s money-bail ban as a model bill. It would have mandated that the tools and kept data private.
In further contrast to California’s reform, the Illinois legislation requires algorithmic calculations to be sent to defense lawyers, who will be able to challenge the predictions. And in all pretrial hearings, the court will start from the presumption that accused people should be released (California’s bill presumed detention).
Every single person accused of a crime in Illinois will potentially be eligible for release, their legal freedom intact. “If this becomes law, Illinois would have some of the strictest restrictions on who can be incarcerated pretrial,” said Doyle.
Previously “virtually anyone accused of anything was eligible for detention without bond,” Grace said. “It should be very hard for the government to take away our freedom. In reality, it was very easy.”
Central American asylum seekers wait as U.S. border patrol agents take groups of them into custody in June near McAllen, Texas. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
'He Just Cries and Cries': Families Grapple With US Deportations Amid Pandemic
Michael Sainato, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Coronavirus outbreaks have spread through US immigration detention centers, with at least 8,000 reported cases."
lvaro Hernandes saw his wife and recently born twin daughters for the last time through a video call on 5 January before he was deported from immigration detention in Kansas to Guatemala, after living in the US for 12 years.
Shortly after Hernandes and his wife brought their two newborn daughters from the hospital in June 2020, he was detained for being undocumented and handed over to immigration customs enforcement by a local sheriff after he called 911 when he was unable to get in contact with his wife for a brief period of time and wasn’t aware there was a non-emergency number for the police.
Despite testimonials from family members, friends, his longtime boss and landlord, an immigration court in Kansas City, Missouri, ordered the deportation to proceed, citing a 2008 DUI conviction. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Hernandes’s family has only been able to speak with him through expensive video calls and collect phone calls. While imprisoned, Hernandes also contracted coronavirus.
“I don’t know if I will ever see him again. He just cries and cries during our visits on camera,” said his wife, Sierra Schauvilegee. “He has been tormented by being separated from us.”
The couple met in 2017 through a mutual friend. She described Alvaro as hardworking, an employee in the agriculture industry working on a cattle ranch for the past eight years for $10 an hour, often working 12-hour days, six to seven days a week.
“He prays one day he will be reunited with his babies,” added Schauvilegee.
The coronavirus pandemic briefly halted arrests and raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), which resumed in mid-July 2020. Human rights organizations, activist groups and congressional representatives have called for a moratorium on deportations during the pandemic, as 185,000 deportations were carried out in the fiscal year 2020 by the Trump administration, many during the pandemic.
Coronavirus outbreaks have spread throughout immigration detention centers in the US, with at least 8,000 reported cases, and a recent report issued by Detention Watch Network linked outbreaks in immigration detention centers to about 250,000 coronavirus cases in communities where the centers are located between May and August 2020.
The outbreaks extended to flights of deported immigrants, spreading coronavirus to other nations. Hundreds of immigrant detainees have withdrawn their cases to halt their deportation out of fear from coronavirus outbreaks in detention centers while pursuing their cases in court.
Under the Trump administration, a zero-tolerance policy enacted in April 2018 at US borders forcibly separated thousands of children from their parents and guardians, and under a secret “pilot” program, the US was separating families at the border as early as 2017. Even after a backlash caused a reversal of the policy, separations continued and hundreds of families have yet to be reunited.
Thousands of immigrants with US-born children are deported every year, creating economic instability for the families left behind and disrupting children’s health and development.
But children also face deportation orders themselves.
Johanna Torres, an immigration lawyer based in Laredo, California, is currently appealing against the deportation order for a three-year-old boy.
The boy and his mother came to the United States without inspection after fleeing from El Salvador after being threatened by a drug cartel. They originally had an immigration court hearing in Houston, Texas, but they relocated to California and the mother did not change the court venue for her son. Because of the court absence, the court ordered the three-year-old boy’s removal from the United States, and an immigration judge also denied a motion to reopen the case.
“Our next step is to file an appeal with the board of immigration appeals,” said Torres. “It was a simple mistake that she has moved swiftly to correct and the system’s punishment is not proportionate.”
As Donald Trump’s final days in office come to a close, the incoming Biden administration has vowed to temporarily suspend deportations while enacting changes to the US immigration system, but transition officials insisted changes will take months to implement.
For those families in the US who have already lost loved ones to deportation, coronavirus restrictions have made it even more difficult to handle the separations.
Lauren Garcia of San Antonio, Texas, was a stay-at-home mother caring for three young daughters while her husband, Juan Garcia, worked full-time as a welder because of the high costs of childcare.
Shortly before the pandemic, her husband was pulled over by a police officer for a minor traffic violation, but detained for an expired driver’s license and handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The couple were married in 2015 and Juan Garcia has lived in the US since 2013.
After spending six months in an immigration detention facility, Juan Garcia was deported to Mexico, leaving his wife and children with no income and Lauren Garcia has been unable to find a job because of the pandemic and her children who are attending school virtually.
“If it wasn’t for my family, my daughters and I would have nowhere to live,” said Laura Garcia. “We’ve been having to travel back and forth to Mexico so our daughters can see their dad. It’s been very hard. It’s not fair. My girls want their dad in their life.”
![Monday's verdict was delivered in a courtroom set up at the police station in Khimki, on the outskirts of Moscow, where Navalny was taken following his detention on Sunday night. (photo: Reuters]](https://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs42/042263-navalny-011821.jpg "Monday's verdict was delivered in a courtroom set up at the police station in Khimki, on the outskirts of Moscow, where Navalny was taken following his detention on Sunday night. (photo: Reuters]")
Monday's verdict was delivered in a courtroom set up at the police station in Khimki, on the outskirts of Moscow, where Navalny was taken following his detention on Sunday night. (photo: Reuters]
Russia Jails Navalny for 30 Days; the Kremlin Critic Calls for Protests
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "A Russian court has ordered Alexey Navalny be remanded in pre-trial detention for 30 days, a move that will heighten tensions between Moscow and Western leaders who are calling for the Kremlin critic's release."
READ MORE
Opponents of the Dakota Access oil pipeline march out of their main camp near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, in February 2017. (photo: Terray Sylvester/Reuters)
Will States Use the Capitol Riot to Crack Down on Pipeline Protests?
Naveena Sadasivam, Grist
Sadasivam writes: "The ideological affiliation of a given protest can have a profound effect on the way it's handled by law enforcement."
arlier this week, with national attention focused on accountability for the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the capitol building in Washington, D.C., Ohio quietly became the 13th state since 2017 to legislate harsher penalties for trespassing on or otherwise interfering with energy and industrial infrastructure — a move that activists and civil liberties groups say is a transparent attempt to criminalize nonviolent protest.
“The whole idea behind this is to chill protests at oil and gas industry sites,” said Reverend Joan Van Becelaere, the executive director of the Unitarian Universalist Justice of Ohio, a liberal, faith-based nonprofit focused on immigration, environmental, and economic justice. “It will really cause nonprofits, churches, and other groups that are concerned about climate justice to think twice about sponsoring any protest or demonstration.”
Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, signed Senate Bill 33 on Monday, making trespassing on oil and gas sites a first-degree misdemeanor punishable with up to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine. (Criminal trespass in Ohio is already a fourth-degree misdemeanor punishable with up to a month in prison and $250 in fines.) The new legislation ups the penalty for trespassing on property with so-called critical infrastructure, a long list of facilities including pipelines, compressor stations, chemical plants, and telephone poles. It also makes “improperly tamper[ing]” with critical infrastructure a third-degree felony that could result in up to five years in prison. Organizations that support such activities could also face civil lawsuits and up to $100,000 in fines. (A spokesperson for DeWine did not respond to Grist’s questions about the governor’s support for the legislation.)
The bill was first introduced almost two years ago and passed the state senate in May 2019. For most of 2020, however, the state’s Republican lawmakers focused on blocking DeWine’s coronavirus-related public health orders and the fallout after key lawmakers were arrested for allegedly accepting bribes to bail out two nuclear plants, so the critical infrastructure bill languished in the legislature’s lower chamber. But during the last week of the legislative session in December, the bill found new life. It passed the state’s house of representatives and was sent to the governor’s desk on the last day of the session.
Environmental groups vigorously fought the bill throughout 2019 when they suspected that the proposal would be used to block protests against a large plastic plant planned along the Ohio River. But in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic, construction of the plant was put on hold and advocates found it more difficult to lobby lawmakers due to social distancing measures, Van Beceleare said.
According to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, a nonprofit civil liberties group that has been tracking anti-protest legislation, 12 other states — including North Dakota, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Iowa — already have similar legislation on the books. Most of these laws bear striking resemblance to model legislation proposed by the conservative nonprofit American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, and have been sponsored by lawmakers with ties to the organization. The Ohio bill, for instance, was sponsored by Republican state senator Frank Hoagland, an ALEC member.
Civil liberties advocates have noted that large protest movements beget anti-protest legislation. Many of the critical infrastructure laws were passed in the months following the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in North Dakota in late 2016. The Black Lives Matter protests from this summer also served as inspiration for state legislators. And this week, just two days after eight protesters were arrested for blocking construction of a pipeline in Minnesota, one of the state’s Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that would make damaging a pipeline a felony. Now, First Amendment advocates worry that the riots in Washington, D.C. may serve as cover for new legislation that will primarily target peaceful protesters who bear little resemblance to last week’s rioters. Indeed, lawmakers in Mississippi, Indiana, and Florida introduced such proposals a day after the capitol siege last week.
“What happened last week has added a new challenge in the fight for protest rights,” said Nora Benavidez, the director of U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America, a nonprofit advocating for First Amendment rights. “We’re trying to make really clear to people that peaceful assembly and gathering together is one thing, but an insurrection with the intent to usurp government authority is completely different.”
The ideological affiliation of a given protest can have a profound effect on the way it’s handled by law enforcement. Research from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit that tracks protests and violence around the world, examined protest actions from May to December of last year and found that U.S. police were twice as likely to break up a left-wing protest compared to a right-wing one. They also found that police used force more frequently with left-wing protesters. Those differences were on display last week, when Trump-supporting rioters faced little resistance from police as they scaled walls and rushed cops in a bid to prevent federal lawmakers from certifying the 2020 election — a stark contrast to the swift law enforcement response that met Black Lives Matter protestors just a few months before.
Benavidez said that the Ohio legislation epitomizes a new generation of “kitchen sink” proposals by state legislators —so-called because these measures aggregate a variety of disparate provisions that could possibly be used to charge protesters, all in one bill. Senate Bill 33 both increases penalties for existing misdemeanors and creates new criminal sanctions. It also holds organizations liable for their members’ possible violation of the law, a provision Benevidez said was particularly concerning from a civil liberties perspective.
“Even, at the textual level, if [Senate Bill 33] somehow seems to be viewpoint-neutral, I am deeply concerned about the way it might be used with unbridled discretion to target certain groups, especially those that might be trying to educate, empower, or collaborate with groups challenging critical infrastructure development,” she said.
One such group may be the Unitarian Universalist Justice of Ohio, Van Beceleare’s nonprofit. If the church’s support of environmental ministry leads to large fines or lawsuits, her board of directors would be reluctant to support such work and would create “a big problem for all of us in the religious community,” she said.
“What little church or nonprofit has lawyers on hand to go in and fight a lawsuit?” she said. “That would be disastrous. That would bankrupt us.”
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