To Protect Labor and Climate: Protect Dissent!

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, March 31, 2024

There’s a war brewing against dissent.

• In Georgia, lawmakers are attempting to make it illegal for communities to protest and advocate against environmental injustice by labeling protestors as “domestic terrorists.” 
• Bills introduced in legislatures around the country would make it illegal to protest at industrial sites, whether publicly or privately owned. 
• In Congress, two Republican Senators have introduced a bill that would make it a federal offense for protesters to block public roads and highways.
• According to the Protect Dissent Network, at least 22 anti-protest bills have been introduced across 15 states in the last year alone, and more than 45 states have considered anti-protest laws in the last five years.

These bills are often justified as protection against climate protestors. But throughout American history such laws have been used repeatedly to criminalize workers who try to organize and strike. They are designed to threaten both workers and communities mobilizing to protect themselves from threats to labor and environmental rights.

The Labor Network believes that workers and communities have a common interest in preserving the basic democratic freedom to protest.

For more on protecting the right to protest: https://www.rightsanddissent.org/campaigns/defend-the-right-to-protest/

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.