EJ MONTINI

Montini: Senate GOP passes another bill to Shut. You. Up.

EJ Montini
opinion columnist


In a party-line vote Republicans in the Arizona Senate approved a bill that, essentially, would force you to stay home and shut up.

Otherwise, you’d risk getting criminally prosecuted and losing everything.

So much for democracy.

They call it an anti-rioting bill but it’s actually an anti-free speech bill. An anti-any-opposition bill. A stay-home-and-shut-up bill.

It should creep you out. It should make you sick.

SB 1142 would expand state laws meant to combat racketeering to include rioting.

I’ve written about this earlier.

Paid protesters? That's fake news

How you should look according to Senate Republicans.

The bill, sponsored by Republican Sen. Sonny Borrelli, would have organizers and protesters of an event that gets out of hand charged with conspiracy and racketeering (for which they could be held criminally and financially liable). The ridiculously broad proposal would allow organizers and bystanders to be prosecuted even if they had nothing to do with any actual crime.

Under existing law a person already can be prosecuted for criminal damage or assault or rioting. A new law is not necessary. Unless punishing rioters is not really its purpose. And it’s not.

ROBERTS: Senate votes to silence protests. No, really

The real purpose of a law like this would be to frighten law-abiding citizens into not attending public demonstrations, for fear they might get arrested.

The idea is based on a completely unproven claim about paid protesters causing trouble.

As Democratic Sen. Katie Hobbs said before the Senate vote,  “This idea that people are being paid to come out and do that? I’m sorry, but I think that is fake news.”

Because it is.

Because there is no proof.

Silence is ... American?

But that doesn’t seem to matter. The idea is to frighten people into not exercising their free speech or their constitutionally protected right to assemble, to voice their grievances.

Imagine that.

Americans claiming to protect the American way by silencing Americans.

When the bill earlier passed through committee (also on a party-line vote), Kevin Heade, a Phoenix defense attorney and member of Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, said, “This is an extremely broad statute, and we have not heard any justification for why it’s necessary.”

I said then that you won’t ever hear any justification. And you won’t.

Because the whole idea behind this is to keep people quiet.