Opponents of the bill say it risks the health of those masking for safety reasons. But those backing the legislation say it is a needed response to the demonstrations, including those at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that escalated to police clashes and arrests.
The bill also further criminalizes the blockage of roads or emergency vehicles for a protest, which has occurred during pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Raleigh and Durham.
I feel like if you just told them this criminalizes klan hoods they’d back off…
It’s not stated well in that article but the bill actually has an exception for secret societies to request permits to wear masks for parades and such. A Democrat state rep (forget her name) pointed out this explicitly would protect the KKK but not regular folk wanting to, say, legally protest Palestine murders, because everyone knows they would be denied permits.
Earlier versions of this bill kept failing until they added what people are calling the KKK exception.
I feel like if you just told them this criminalizes klan hoods they’d back off…
It’s not stated well in that article but the bill actually has an exception for secret societies to request permits to wear masks for parades and such. A Democrat state rep (forget her name) pointed out this explicitly would protect the KKK but not regular folk wanting to, say, legally protest Palestine murders, because everyone knows they would be denied permits.
Earlier versions of this bill kept failing until they added what people are calling the KKK exception.
That’s fuckin wild. How many ‘secret societies’ wear masks for parades and such? This stuff is getting so close to open fascism.
It’s not close, it’s here, these people need to be stopped immediately by any means
It’s still got this plausible deniability veneer, but you’re absolutely right. We need to be seriously organizing to combat it.
It’s not like it would be enforced for them.