Leland
Leland
Aug 23, 2017 · 2 min read

Quite agree with your position, except the lines I highlighted and sent to you. The last thing we need is another social control law. Worst if republicans have anything to do with it.

You advocate for a RICO law with ramped-up enforcement. Well, that is the same kind of law that will be used against you for organising peaceful protests against the evil present. This is the reason for my saying that.

(1) History teaches that it was not the absence of laws that cause dictatorial catastrophes, but the complete disregard for laws already written.

(2) I know by the obvious that in a protest, democrats are arrested in larger numbers than republicans and for good measure are fined or jailed disparately. Sometimes for the hell of it, bond is so exorbitant, that the citizen is kept in jail for days. The police, arbitrarily drop charges and often overcharge citizens to leverage a guilty plea.

A woman laughed at Jeff Sessions. Laughed! She was arrested, charged, put before the court and the rest is unnecessary. Protesters in Washington, more than a mile from the Trumps inauguration, were arrested en masse and charged with felony rioting or some such. The ignominy was not the crime, but the behavior of the police. For them, being present, established their probable cause. Two hundred and forty seven arrested; about three windows broken.

(3) Occupy Wall Street, Ferguson City, Dakota Access Pipeline protests. The most common factors were arrests of journalists and anyone who breathes in sight of the police.

(4) BLM, is a peaceful, non-violent movement recently honoured by Australia for their work, but tarred in America as terrorists. How did the police and GOP legislators react? They tabled bills to fight what they perceived as “economic terrorism” to merely advocate or organise a boycott.

(5) GOP state legislators, tabled bills absolving any motorist of legal consequences if they drove through a crowd of protesters. Remember Heather Heyer.

I have much more, but folks are not swayed by evidence anymore. This is as good a time as any to remember the Haymarket Riot, the Red Scare, Kent State and Attica Prison protests. Why would anyone continue to trust people who have demonstrated time and again that they are not trustworthy?

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    Leland

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    Leland