JACKSONVILLE, Fla — In the summer of 2020, the United States saw protests and demonstrations like it hadn’t seen in decades, as the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrated against police brutality and racial injustice.
Those demonstrations occasionally grew violent, like in Minneapolis after an officer there killed George Floyd. Now, several states, including Florida, are moving to enact new laws that critics say would stifle the right to protest.
Saturday, local activist groups in Jacksonville, including the Jacksonville Community Action Committee and the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville, hosted a rally on the steps of city hall. Activists called for city council members and the mayor to stand up and speak out against House Bill 1 in Florida. Specifically, they want city leaders to draft a resolution against it.
“It is written that the darkest and hottest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis,” Ben Frazier of the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville said. “We want the city officials to speak up, make their positions known. Stop hiding. We want them to express some amount of what they used to call testicular fortitude, resilience fortitude and dedication to what it is they believe in,” Frazier said.
The bill would enhance criminal penalties for anyone arrested at a protest that turns violent. It would also create a new criminal offense called mob intimidation, make it harder for cities to cut law enforcement spending and would toughen penalties for existing crimes if those crimes are a part of a riot, among other things.
“We see awesome things happening in our city and it’s through protesting,” Christina Kittle with the Jacksonville Community Action Committee said. “Right across [the street] you hear the drums. They’re celebrating the name change of James Weldon Johnson Park. That was something protestors had to do. We had to fight for it,” she said.
“Some of us did get arrested. I’ve been arrested in that park right across the street before unlawfully and we’ve had the charges dropped and we’ve been able to combat that. If House Bill 1 were to pass, we’d have a much more difficult time protesting or seeing any changes happening in the city,” she said.
Activists with the Northside Coalition and the Jacksonville Community Action Committee called the bill dangerous and racist.
“Let’s not mince words. This horrible and heinous legislation is unconstitutional as hell and our response to it is in part a constitutional hell no,” Fraizer said.
“We want our local officials to stand up and speak out and end up on the right side of history. This legislation is reprehensible. It is dead wrong. We want them to help us kill this legislation. We say kill the bill,” he said.
Council members Brenda Priestly-Jackson and Garrett Dennis have already spoken out against HB1 and were at a protest against it in Jacksonville in January.
Kittle said the Jacksonville Community Action Committee and the Northside Coalition will join several other activist groups from across the state in Tallahassee to protest the bill on March 2. This is the first day of the legislative session.