After two months of protests across from the State Capitol building in Nashville, Tennessee lawmakers voted for a tidy way to disperse their new neighbors: making it illegal to camp there.
The law, which also targets protests on public property, makes convictions punishable by up to six years in prison—and even loss of voting rights.
The Tennessee bill, passed by the state legislature last week, was the latest legislation targeting dissent in a year marked by nationwide protests against racism and police brutality. It follows a Michigan bill that would classify rioting as terrorism, and a slew of recent legislation—begun before George Floyd’s killing at the hands of police in late May—imposing harsh punishments on anti-pipeline protesters.
The measures have real potential to chill protest movements, their critics say.
Tennessee’s SB 8005/HB 8005, which passed the state legislature on Wednesday, would rewrite state criminal code to make it a Class E felony to camp on state property between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. That’s bad news for the People’s Plaza, a movement of racial justice protesters who have led a nonstop demonstration near the State Capitol since June 12.
The group says it will gladly vacate the state-owned plaza—as soon as Gov. Bill Lee meets with them, or the state legislature removes a bust of Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Capitol building. So far, neither has happened.
“There are aspects of the law that I might have done differently, that were different from my original proposal,” Lee said last week, indicating he nonetheless intended to sign it so as to ensure “lawlessness doesn’t occur in the midst of protest.”
Protesters and civil liberties experts cried foul.
“They can say this bill is about protecting law enforcement,” ACLU of Tennessee Policy Director Brandon Tucker told The Daily Beast. “It’s not. Law enforcement is already protected. This bill came about when people took to the street demanding racial justice, an end to police violence, and to say that Black lives matter.”
Anjanette Edwards, an activist who demonstrates at the People’s Plaza, said she thought it was quite clear that the bill targeted protesters like her.
“I believe a lot of the revisions that were made to this bill were trying to capitalize on actions that occurred when the People’s Plaza was occupying that space,” she told The Daily Beast.
Guess what making protest a felony does: it nullifies your right to vote. Sometimes permanently, depending on which state you’re a citizen of. Only two U.S. states never curtail your right to vote: Maine and Vermont. These bills are voter disenfranchisement and suppression of the First Amendment.