The National Lawyers Guild has released a new report titled "Punishing Protest: Government Tactics that Suppress Free Speech" that looks at the ways in which the state has organized in recent years to suppress dissent. The 105-page report looks at everything from how the media is used to demonize "protests" and "protestors" and how police use crowd control weapons, pre-emptive arrests, and excessive restrictions on speech to limit dissent. The report also outlines "hierarchy" of law enforcement activity that seeks to limit dissent at the highest levels of the government:
Negative media portrayals of protesters, and protest in general, pave the way for a broad hierarchy of threats to the First Amendment. On one level, police are arresting demonstrators and others without probable cause and then committing perjury and altering evidence that would otherwise both exculpate those arrested and reveal patterns of gross police misconduct. Such actions can be ruinous to the ii Punishing Protest arrestees who are forced through the court system, often at great personal expense and inconvenience. And such actions are detrimental to the integrity of the criminal justice system and corrosive to public confidence that the system works.
At the next level, local and state governments show disdain for free speech by passing legislation punishing certain offenses more severely if committed for political reasons. For example, the New York Police Department enacted regulations clearly aimed at bicycle activists who ride as a group once a month through the city streets. At the same time, many cities and states are loosening or even removing decades-old restrictions on police spying on political activists. These restrictions were originally enacted after it became clear that law enforcement, from municipal police to the FBI, was being used as a tool to persecute political dissidents.
At the top of the hierarchy, the Justice Department is routinely applying the emotionladen designation of "terrorist" to activists in order to intimidate them, to levy higher charges and penalties against them, and arguably to influence the outcome of trials. The FBI is issuing subpoenas to activists to testify in front of grand juries in an unlawful attempt to engage in political intelligence gathering. Environmental activists are now the Justice Department's primary target, called "domestic terrorists" for acts of civil disobedience aimed at drawing attention to spoilage of the environment. Animal rights activists are also being targeted, evidenced by the recent passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law that treats as terrorism certain activities--many protected by the First Amendment--if committed on behalf of animal rights. Moreover, federal and local legislation is being enacted that punishes crimes more seriously if committed to protest governmental policies or corporate practices that benefit government. These highly-coordinated federal tactics are unrelated to legitimate law enforcement efforts.
For more, read the complete "Punishing Protest: Government Tactics that Suppress Free Speech."
