Telling Me I Got to Beware

What a field day for the Heat/
A thousand people in the street/
Singing songs and a-carryin' signs/
Mostly say "Hooray for our side"...

-- Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth"

Let me throw up a couple of links here, first from Evan Donovan with WFLA back in April:

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1 at a 10 a.m. press conference with Florida lawmakers and law enforcement officials at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office’s headquarters in Winter Haven. He did not take questions after the signing.

The law went into effect immediately.

The legislation, nicknamed the “anti-riot bill,” was first filed in the Florida House of Representatives in early January, and passed the Senate on Thursday evening.

The bill, which covers 61 pages, makes several changes to Florida criminal and administrative law, and will:

Make it more difficult for cities and counties to reduce funding for law enforcement, allowing local elected officials to challenge those budget decisions, and giving the state power to approve or amend the local budget

Allow those local governments to be sued if they fail to stop a riot

Define “riot” as a violent public disturbance involving 3 or more people acting with common intent resulting in injury to others, damage to property, or the imminent danger of injury or damage

Enhance penalties for people who commit crimes during a riot

Create a new second-degree felony called an “aggravated riot,” which occurs when the riot has more than 25 participants, causes great bodily harm or more than $5,000 in property damage, uses or threatens to use a deadly weapon, or blocks roadways by force or threat of force...

If you don't see the horror of any of that, try to imagine for example hanging out in a group of three people walking down the street minding your own business until a cop car pulls up and the officers accuse your little group of "acting with imminent intent to cause injury or damage." It'd be your word against the cops, which is too bad for you because you're getting tasered, handcuffed, jailed, and/or shot for it.

Imagine you're a city manager who suddenly has to deal with a street protest because a local cop shot an unarmed Black kid. Now you fear your city getting sued by your business owners even if a window gets busted, so you're pushing your law enforcement to crack down harder than ever to show you've done your job. There's no carrot here, only the stick swung by state Republicans to make sure no city takes the "soft power" approach of resolving a protest.

This isn't even the worst of it. Here's additional details from Steven LeMongello and Gray Rohrer with the Orlando Sentinel:

But opponents say it would make it easier for law enforcement to charge organizers and anyone involved in a protest, even if they had not engaged in any violence.

“The problem with this bill is that the language is so overbroad and vague ... that it captures anybody who is peacefully protesting at a protest that turns violent through no fault of their own,” said Kara Gross, the legislative director at ACLU Florida. “Those individuals who do not engage in any violent conduct under this bill can be arrested and charged with a third-degree felony and face up to five years in prison and loss of voting rights. The whole point of this is to instill fear in Floridians...”

The law, which goes into effect immediately, grants civil legal immunity to people who drive through protesters blocking a road, which Democrats argued might have protected the white nationalist who ran over and killed counter-protester Heather Heyer during the Charlottesville tumult in 2017. It also makes blocking a highway a felony offense...

Hitting protesters with cars is a common tactic for the White Power wingnuts who show up to counter-protest and get their scalps. Florida just gave them all a goddamn hunting license.

So not only are DeSantis and Florida Republicans making it easier to arrest any group of minorities under any circumstances even when there's no riot actually happening, the sadists are going to make it easier for trump-worshipping wingnuts to commit Vehicular Manslaughter if they "fear" three people walking across the street intersection are rioting. This is akin to Stand Your Ground, which is still a terrible law. Only now you can use your goddamned coal roller truck to do so.

/headdesk

None of this is about the safety of the general public. ALL of this is geared towards stomping on the powerless who have only public protests as a means to address problems and demands that our governments do something to fix things.

This is a straight-up attack on the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

DeSantis claims this is about shutting down violent riots. It's not. This is about turning every protest especially the peaceful ones into a riot so he and his law enforcement buddies can throw everybody into jail.

Republicans don't want to hear from you if you got a problem. Florida Republicans don't think any protest is a peaceful assembly (unless it's their own side staging an insurrection in trump's unholy name). These godless wingnuts want to shut down the freedom of speech of those who have every reason to speak out against injustice.

There is nothing legal in these anti-riot laws. Because these laws turn everything into a riot in the Police State's point of view.

Gods help us.