Oklahoma lawmakers have passed a bill that they’re pretending is about protecting citizens when it’s really about their contempt for anti-racism protesters. The legislation that passed in the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday increases penalties for protesters who block streets while granting blanket immunity for drivers who injure or even kill protesters. To the GOP legislators in Oklahoma, I say: If you hate Black Lives Matter so much that you want to run it over in your Honda Pilot, just say so.
Anyway, the Associated Press reports that the bill, which is now on its way to be signed by the governor, passed in the state Senate mostly along party lines with a 38-10 vote. The bill makes blocking public streets during a protest a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
As AP noted: “Blocking roadways is a longtime tactic of nonviolent protesters dating back to even before the civil rights movement in the 1960s.” A protest isn’t really a protest if no one is being disturbed or inconvenienced, but whatever: Let’s just say for the sake of argument that locking up nonviolent protesters for a year for blocking a street is in the interest of public safety and it’s not being done because conservatives view police brutality as negro extermination porn, and they’re mad people are protesting against it.
There’s still the issue of motorists being allowed to plow through demonstrators without suffering consequences.
From AP:
Sen. Rob Standridge, a Republican from Norman who wrote the bill, said it was prompted mostly by an incident in Tulsa last summer in which a pickup truck drove through a crowd gathered on a Tulsa interstate while protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Several people were injured, including one who was paralyzed from the waist down after falling from an overpass, but the driver, whose family was in the car, was not charged.
“The kids cowered in the back seat because they feared for their lives,” Standridge said. “That’s what this bill is about.”
Source: Oklahoma Senate Passes Bill Allowing Drivers to Hit Protesters Without Being Charged
