State legislators attack the right to protest
Fifty-two years ago today, famed civil rights judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. issued a that prohibited Alabama Gov. George Wallace and a local sheriff from interfering with voting rights marchers.
It came 10 days after Bloody Sunday, the day protesters began marching to the Alabama Capitol only to be turned back and brutally beaten by state troopers and a sheriff鈥檚 posse as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
Four days after Johnson's ruling, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led more than 3,000 marchers across the bridge and then on to the steps of the Capitol in Montgomery 鈥� their right to protest upheld, their path unimpeded by law enforcement.
The events of March 1965 led to passage of the Voting Rights Act that effectively ended more than seven decades of Jim Crow segregation in the Deep South.
But today, lawmakers in 18 states want to crack down on the right to protest.
From Florida to Washington, they鈥檙e considering everything from criminal prosecution of people engaged in peaceful protest to pre-emptive arrests of those who may protest in the future.
In Arizona, for example, legislation would reclassify protest as 鈥渞ioting,鈥� a form of racketeering, and empower law enforcement to seize protesters鈥� assets. In North Dakota, a bill would shift blame from drivers who hit protesters with their cars to the protestors themselves. The measure has inspired similar bills in Minnesota, Tennessee and Iowa.
鈥淵ou can protest all you want, but you can鈥檛 protest up on a roadway,鈥� 鈥淚t鈥檚 dangerous for everybody.鈥�
That鈥檚 not how Judge Johnson saw it.
鈥淭he law is clear,鈥� he wrote, 鈥渢hat the right to petition one鈥檚 government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups. These rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways.鈥�
Many legislators today are all too willing to forget the sacrifices made by those in Selma.
Recently, we hosted U.S. Rep. John Lewis and other civil rights leaders at the Civil Rights Memorial Center to mark the 52nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Lewis, who almost lost his life on Bloody Sunday, laid a wreath in remembrance of those who died in the fight for justice.
鈥淲e came here in memory of so many fighters for the cause of freedom, justice, equality and the dignity of man," Lewis said. "They gave everything they had 鈥� even their lives."
It is shameful that legislators are so quick to forget.
