The government says the anti-protest bill was just a small tweak of the existing law. Don’t believe it.
On its face, the new legislation doesn’t change a whole lot. Yet the Occupy protesters are in an uproar that the bill both targets them and also signals a radical shift in free speech law. Almost nobody else seems to have noticed it at all. Who’s right?
That all depends on what you want to protest and where.
H.R. 347, benignly titled the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act ... the bill will “improve” public grounds is by moving all those unsightly protesters elsewhere. The law purports to update an old law, Section 1752 of Title 18 of the United States Code, that restricted areas around the president, vice president, or any others under the protection of the Secret Service.
But it’s important to understand what has changed since the original law was enacted in 1971, because it shows how much a tiny tweak to the intent requirement in a statute can impact the free speech of everyone... For one thing, the law makes it easier for the government to criminalize protest. Period.... it’s almost impossible to predict what constitutes “disorderly or disruptive conduct” or what sorts of conduct authorities deem to “impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.”
They conflate dissent with danger, a Cold War habit which America was beginning to outgrow, but which after 9/11 seems to be a permanent part of the political landscape.
