preraphaelitepunk.com

(Disclaimer/Note for Mark: Some of this is meant to be read in a sarcastic, “can’t believe our country is coming to this” tone. Several examples I use are, as far as I can tell, apparently not explicitly included in the proposed legislation, but I’m ranting here, and sometimes getting a little carried away helps to make your point, or at least makes you feel a bit better. If you’re not in the mood for such a thing, please skip or come back to this later. As always, this is only my opinion, and though I’ve tried to research this as best I can, I can’t find anything except the same AP article circulating around, in various forms of completeness. I’m sure there’s more information out there I couldn’t find.)

Via Supervegan, legislation is under consideration to outlaw targeting not only individual employees of firms under protest (shouldn’t this already be covered under laws against stalking and harrassment?), but also pressure against economic partners of those firms — and “campaigns of virtual harrassment over the Internet.”

Taken broadly, and according to what’s in the article (I haven’t been able to find drafts of the actual proposed bill to see what it says), the law seems to attempt to outlaw basically any form of protest that could hurt a company financially, which would outlaw basically any form of demonstration, you’d think. If this makes it into law and is broadly interpreted — and how likely is it that it would be narrowly interpreted, anyway? — then mightn’t it make holding “Kentucky Fried Cruelty” signs and distributing pamphlets outside KFC stores illegal? The intent is certainly to affect business, and thereby bring about a change in business practices. Would organizing boycotts count? What if you used inflammatory language? Wore outlandish costumes of animals used for cosmetics experiments? Lay naked with other people in a big pile wearing bear masks?

How exactly are you supposed to register disapproval and urge change if this law passes? There are no examples of suggested approved protest methods; would participation in HSUS animal welfare e-mail campaigns then count as virtual harrassment over the Internet? Is there going to be a set quota for how many times you can legitimately contact your Congressional representatives — beyond which you become either a spammer or an Internet threat?

I personally don’t approve of violence or intimidation in demonstrations. To me, it’s self-defeating, to say nothing of rude, and I feel that being rude to those whose actions we find worthy of disapproval is ineffective in the long run. However, there can be a fine line sometimes: one person may consider holding placards with photographs of what happens inside a slaughterhouse to be provocative but reasonable to use in a protest, whereas another might consider that intimidation. In our ligitious society, I can just see a KFC customer becoming upset that protesters drew his attention to particularly unsavory allegations about how his meal was prepared, and filing a lawsuit for mental anguish and lost wages because he was “terrorized.”

A fuller version of the article appears at Monsters and Critics. At the very end, the president of the Biotechnology Industry Association says that the intent is not to block holding signs outside of business. Well, that’s a relief. 9.9 Because laws never are interpreted in any way other than the original intent, ya know.

I think my main problem — besides the apparent lack of specificity and talk of “economic damage” being a crime — is that there seem to be laws already in place to deal with the illegal acts that some protesters take. There are laws against stalking, harrassment, vandalism, etc. (none of which, btw, I manage to see as actual terrorism — they’re bad, but surely terrorism is something rather different and altogether worse?*). I fail to see why we need a law that covers these exact same things — but only when they’re being done as part of a political action, and for a specific cause. If an AR activist posts the names and ages of the children of a company’s CEO, I can certainly see that might be endangerment of the children — but how exactly is it worse than if a pro-life activist does exactly the same thing for the children of an OB/GYN at the local Planned Parenthood?

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*Is it just me, or is this word kind of losing its meaning through overuse, anyway? I’m waiting for the laundry detergent commercials that promise to save you from terrorism by grass stains and mud, pizza delivery commercials that offer escape from the terrorism of cold pizza.