Pipeline Protesters Decry North Dakota Bills That Criminalize Protests
Source: NBC News
JAN 13 2017, 10:58 PM ET
by DANIEL A. MEDINA
Protesters against the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline have expressed dismay at a new slate of bills proposed this week by North Dakota's Republican-led and largely oil-friendly state legislature that, if passed, could potentially upend their months-long protest movement.
The bills, motivated by residents' frustration with the ongoing protests in the southern part of the state where the Oceti Sakowin camp is located, would make it a crime for adults to wear masks at protests similar to the law that lasted for nearly 50 years that was aimed at the Ku Klux Klan and exempt a driver from liability if they unintentionally injure or kill a pedestrian obstructing traffic on a public road or highway.
Another bill would require the state's attorney general to sue the federal government to help cover some of the more than $22 million in state law enforcement costs incurred since the protests over the $3.7 billion pipeline began in August 2016. Critics say the project threatens ancestral Standing Rock Sioux land and the water supply.
For Tara Houska, a Native American environmental activist who has resided at the camp since August, the bills are "a direct violation of our First Amendment rights."
Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dakota-pipeline-protests/pipeline-protesters-decry-north-dakota-bills-criminalize-protests-n706681
TeamPooka
(24,201 posts)cstanleytech
(26,213 posts)Sounds very unconditional to me. This "officials" seem to easily forget their oaths of office and work to bring down the constitution.
Unreal. Oh wait, this is very real.
burrowowl
(17,632 posts)yuiyoshida
(41,818 posts)Sending Troops to North Dakota to shoot and kill protesters to get them off that land, so the pipeline can go in. Trump said he would undo Obama's legacy, what better place to start.. and show their Racist attitudes against Native Americans.
kimbutgar
(21,038 posts)In the 60's the national guard shot protesters on Kent state in Texas. It really got people riled up.
yuiyoshida
(41,818 posts)Blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, ... all of us are INTRUDERS on "Their Land" ...yeah MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN!! I am sure Fox News will push that agenda again.
That's what the Trump Administration policy is, for why else would the Neo Nazi's and KKK support Donald Trump?
They_Live
(3,223 posts)Like the song says..."four dead in Ohio"