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Tennessee Residents: Fight for Your Right to Protest!

Tennessee Residents: Fight for Your Right to Protest!

Tennessee Residents: Fight for Your Right to Protest!

In Tennessee, State Representative Matthew Hill has introduced House Bill 668, which reads, “A person driving an automobile who is exercising due care and injures another person who is participating in a protest or demonstration and is blocking traffic in a public right-of-way is immune from civil liability for such injury.” Although the bill claims that drivers who cause injury through actions that are “willful or wanton,” establishing the intent of drivers who injure protesters will be difficult. Matthew Hill has said, “We don't want anyone to be hurt, but people should not knowingly put themselves in harm’s way.” It shouldn’t be hard not to drive your car in to a group of protesters in a roadway; there is no reason to expect that you’re in harm’s way if you are participating in a protest where a large group of people is in the street. This bill is obviously intended to create a climate of fear and to end certain types of protest. As such, it is a bill that we, as animal advocates who often do need to exercise our rights to assembly and protest, need to make sure is defeated! 

Across the United States, our rights to peaceful means of protest are under attack. These attacks pave the way for our work as animal advocates to be repressed and criminalized. Multiple states have introduced to legislation to severely penalize protesters. Some states are attempting to turn former misdemeanors, such as blocking a highway, into felonies, while others are looking to stifle dissent by creating new categories of crime, such as “economic terrorism.” This is eerily reminiscent of the “Green Scare” of the mid-2000’s, which saw animal rights and environmental activists labeled “terrorists” and treated as such by the United States government. 

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