Three states have quietly criminalized environmental protest during covid chaos
Kentucky, South Dakota and West Virginia have all passed laws in March designating oil and gas pipelines as critical infrastructure to stamp out fossil fuel protests. In Kentucky and South Dakota, tampering with or damaging pipelines and other property damage will now bring felony charges. Previous efforts to criminalize protest in South Dakota were defeated or walked back last year; the governorship changed hands last November to Republican Kristi Noem
This is only the latest in a trend of criminalizing protest by protecting pipelines as critical infrastructure:
“The legislation’s similarities were no coincidence. As climate change projections grew more dire and the bloody 2016 fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline became a new Alamo cry for environmentalists, the fossil fuel industry’s political allies began promoting state legislation to restrict protests.
Oklahoma passed the first legislation protecting pipelines as critical infrastructure in 2017. Shortly after, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative policy shop funded by big business and right-wing billionaires, drafted a generic bill it called the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.”
Five other states — Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio and Pennsylvania — are considering similar legislation.
Here’s more info from Greenpeace’s Connor Gibson, who tipped off HuffPo, and further coverage from The Independent. I also laid out how various states are restricting the right to protest in a twitter thread for AJ+ last year.
