{"id":175564,"date":"2021-01-20T18:45:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T23:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/01\/20\/meanwhile-in-dc\/"},"modified":"2021-01-20T18:45:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-20T23:45:00","slug":"meanwhile-in-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/01\/20\/meanwhile-in-dc\/","title":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, in DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republicans in Congress are using the right-wing insurrection on January 6 as an excuse for bills targeted primarily at peaceful protesters like Black Lives Matter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Republicans never miss an opportunity to use a crisis to rat-fuck the country, do they? <\/p>\n

In September, Florida governor and Trump ally Ron DeSantis proposed<\/a> a bill dubbed the Combating Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act to create new criminal penalties for offenses commonly committed during protests. He said<\/a> it was needed to stop the \u201cprofessional agitators bent on sowing disorder and causing mayhem in our cities\u201d following months of largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. <\/p>\n

Hours after a far-right mob stormed the Capitol at the behest of the president, Florida Republicans introduced<\/a> a version of the bill. That night, DeSantis said<\/a> the violence in Washington shows that lawmakers \u201chave no time to waste to uphold public safety\u201d and must \u201cswiftly pass this bill.\u201d <\/p>\n

DeSantis isn\u2019t alone. Within the past year, lawmakers in 24 states have introduced at least 45 bills to create new penalties or increase criminal penalties for offenses related to protesting, discourage cuts to police funding, and provide protections to people who drive their cars into protesters or shoot protesters in an alleged act of self defense. Six of those bills\u2014one in Utah, one in Mississippi, one in West Virginia, one in Tennessee and two in South Dakota\u2014have been signed into law. <\/p>\n

But the bills aren\u2019t aimed at reining in the kind of violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, and federal prosecutors already have a litany<\/a> of charges at their disposal to hold the perpetrators accountable. The bills seek to criminalize conduct typically associated with Black Lives Matter protests, like blocking streets or highways and camping out at state capitols. Provisions of DeSantis\u2019s bill seek to discourage local governments from cutting police budgets, but what happened on Jan. 6 can\u2019t be pinned on a lack of police funding or intelligence\u2014the FBI knew<\/a> extremists were planning to commit violence in Washington days before, and Capitol Police rejected<\/a> offers for additional manpower from the National Guard. While some police officers were brutally attacked<\/a> or took action<\/a> to protect the lives of others, others shook hands<\/a> with a member of the mob. One police officer even took a selfie<\/a> with the insurrectionists.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is why I oppose changes to the current laws in response to the January 6 insurrection.<\/span><\/p>\n

The people who will be enforcing these laws, cops, prosecutors, etc.  are objectively pro-fascist and institutionally, if not necessarily personally, racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

All that more laws get you is more opportunities for abuse.
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republicans in Congress are using the right-wing insurrection on January 6 as an excuse for bills targeted primarily at peaceful protesters like Black Lives Matter. Republicans never miss an opportunity to use a crisis to rat-fuck the country, do they? In September, Florida governor and Trump ally Ron DeSantis proposed a bill dubbed the Combating …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[447,364,526,449,374,590],"class_list":["post-175564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-congress","tag-evil","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct","tag-legislation","tag-politics","tag-protests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}