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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFlorida's Trump-Loving Governor Just Made It OK to Hit Protesters With Your Car
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Floridas Trump-Loving Governor Just Made It OK to Hit Protesters With Your Car
Ron DeSantis apparently has a problem with the constitutionally enshrined right to assemble.
By Bess Levin
April 19, 2021
As racial-justice protests swelled around the country during his last year in office, Donald Trump made it abundantly clear that he had little regard for the constitutionally enshrined right to assemble. Regularly conflating peaceful protesters with violent ones, he frequently threatened to unleash law and order (read: police brutality) on people for having the audacity to attempt to have their voices heard. Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis, he wrote on Twitter on Juneteenth 2020. Earlier that month he had the National Guard tear-gas peaceful protesters assembled in D.C. in the wake of George Floyds killing so that he could do a Bible photo op. And now a Republican who many believe will follow in Trumps White House footsteps is picking up where he left off, vis-à-vis preventing people from protesting systemic racism.
On Monday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed an anti-riot bill into law that, among other things, grants civil immunity to people who decide to drive their cars into protesters who are blocking a road. The bill, which was drafted in the wake of last summers Black Lives Matter protests, also penalizes local governments that interfere with efforts to stop riots; prevents people accused of rioting from being bailed out of jail until after their first court appearance; and makes it a second-degree felony to destroy a plaque, memorial, painting, flag, or other structure commemorating historical people or events (like, say, Confederate statutes). That would make such actions punishable by up to a decade in prison.
While the governor claimed the legislation strikes the appropriate balance of safeguarding every Floridians constitutional right to peacefully assemble, while ensuring that those who hide behind peaceful protest to cause violence in our communities will be punished, others have (quite rightly!) called it out for the assault on civil liberties it is.
more...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/ron-desantis-anti-riot-bill
no_hypocrisy
(46,104 posts)Or the judges/juries for civil liability court cases.
I can't see the judge reading instructions to a jury that a protestor "assumed the risk".
Fullduplexxx
(7,863 posts)rownesheck
(2,343 posts)How in the hell would they work that one out?! Florida is such a fucked up state.
keithbvadu2
(36,803 posts)Initech
(100,075 posts)Vinca
(50,271 posts)keithbvadu2
(36,803 posts)ChoppinBroccoli
(3,784 posts).............feel free to plow right through it.