On Thursday, Dec. 19, the U.S. Senate will vote on a bill to crush First Amendment rights protecting free speech and peaceful protest. The “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act” has been described by constitutional scholar and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin as a “werewolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Raskin warns that the bill could overturn all rights to due process. While there are already laws that clearly describe support to terrorists as a felony, this bill would not distinguish between foreign and domestic terrorism and, most frighteningly, would not require any real evidence other than an accusation. It’s clearly a propaganda tool to rebrand protests by organizations such as Massachusetts groups focusing on environmental justice, or larger efforts to protect vulnerable minorities, like the Black Lives Matter movements, or even news media that equitably cover their causes.
Although the law was initially meant to suppress campus protests in solidarity with Palestine, its ambiguous wording is designed to intimidate activists who work to protect vulnerable minorities, the environment, or unjust laws. For anyone who can remember the terrible years of Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare hearings, this is a return to something even worse, an assault on the freedom of the press or “the right of the people peacefully to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Please call your senators today to demand that they vote against this travesty, and ask friends or relatives in other states to do the same.
Pelle Lowe
Northampton