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- cross-posted to:
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Lobbyists and lawmakers have coordinated to enact new laws that increase criminal penalties for peaceful protests
Fossil fuel lobbyists coordinated with lawmakers behind the scenes and across state lines to push and shape laws that are escalating a crackdown on peaceful protests against oil and gas expansion, a new Guardian investigation reveals.
Records obtained by the Guardian show that lobbyists working for major North American oil and gas companies were key architects of anti-protest laws that increase penalties and could lead to non-violent environmental and climate activists being imprisoned up to 10 years.
Emails between fossil fuel lobbyists and lawmakers in Utah, West Virginia, Idaho and Ohio suggest a nationwide strategy to deter people frustrated by government failure to tackle the climate crisis from peacefully disrupting the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure by enacting tough laws with lengthy jail sentences.
The first amendment of the US Constitution gives citizens the right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Lobbying itself isn’t necessarily, fundamentally, a bad thing.
What has happened is that 200+ years of social mores, and laws/regulations written to protect and benefit capital (capped off with Citizens United) have resulted in a level of corruption that’s difficult to even comprehend. It has become legalized bribery.
But even if money does not exchange hands… if I have a million dollars to organize a group of lawyers, PR experts, propagandists, etc. I can still generate and undue impact in legislation that would be hard to match by any regular family voicing their opinion on their own accord
I agree with the first amendment but I think funding a full think tank and funneling “my voice” through a paid army is twisting the goal of the first commandment… and that is before the open bribery that we do see nowadays