BILL COULD GIVE PROTESTORS WHO CAUSE INJURY LIFE SENTENCE

SALEM -- The harshest critics of the war protests in downtown Portland angrily called the demonstrators "terrorists" and wished aloud that the police and courts would treat them as such.

This morning, that idea gets put to the test at the Oregon Legislature, where a ranking senator has introduced a bill to "create the crime of terrorism" and apply it to people who intentionally cause injury while disrupting commerce or traffic.

Senate Bill 742 is the brainchild of Sen. John Minnis, R-Wood Village, a Portland police detective who also serves as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It's scheduled for a hearing in his committee beginning at 8 a.m.

The proposal already has come under heavy attack from the American Civil Liberties Union, antiwar activists and some of Minnis' colleagues in the Senate. But the longtime lawmaker offers a laconic grin about accusations that he's shredding the Constitution to make a point about protesters.

Minnis, on the defensive after the first draft of his bill made it sound as if the average Critical Mass cyclist would wind up spending life behind bars, says it was written too hurriedly. Recently drafted amendments narrow the bill so it isn't so draconian, he says.

"People in their little bike rides don't apply," he says. But if they do something intentionally to injure or kill someone while they're demonstrating, they could be tried as terrorists.

Minnis says he borrowed language from Oregon's treason statutes, and meant the bill as an "umbrella" law covering all types of terrorism, including eco-sabotage. The bill certainly would apply to someone caught spiking trees to prevent logging, he says.

The bill is the most visceral legislative response to the events of Sept. 11 and its aftermath. It comes at a time when cities around the nation are dealing with increasingly large and confrontational antiwar rallies stemming from the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Other states are taking similar action in an effort to crack down on what some fear may be a wave of terrorist acts in response to the Iraq war. The Washington House last week passed a bill creating six new terrorism-related crimes, including possession of weapons of mass destruction, making terrorist threats and providing material support to terrorists.

But Minnis' bill stands out in that it appears to target domestic protesters who go beyond marching in the streets. It also includes language that would require police to cooperate with federal antiterror investigators and would allow indefinite record-keeping on suspects.

Those are the aspects that caught the attention of the ACLU. The initial bill was "ludicrous," said David Fidanque, executive director of the ACLU of Oregon. The amended version isn't much better, he says.

"We think this bill is a much graver threat to the freedoms that all Oregonians hold dear than is created by any terrorist," Fidanque says. "It will do nothing to make us safer, and would do a lot to undermine our constitutional rights."

Martin Gonzales, who helped organize one of the Portland peace rallies last week, said Minnis' proposal is a huge overreaction to a phantom problem.

"More and more, the notion in this country that any act of protest, particularly in time of war, is seen as unpatriotic," says Gonzales, who is with the American Friends Service Committee, an activist organization dedicated to peace. Demonstrators block traffic and "disrupt commerce," Gonzales says to make a basic point:

"We can't continue to have business as usual. How can we go on about our lives, our business, when our government is inflicting pain, inflicting death on other people in the world?"

Minnis insists he supports the right of people to protest peacefully. But if they get violent and disruptive, "They don't get a pass from me."

emphasis added.

i searched and didn't see this anywhere, sorry if its a dupe.

"....apply it to people who intentionally cause injury while disrupting commerce or traffic."

If those licestorms are keeping me from making a living, thein it's INJURY, and they ought to pay. Nobody has the right to harm others, but they do, in many ways, and they get away with it.

I for one have had enough of the freaks. Horowitz ain't talking out the side of his neck. Leftists are a clear and present danger to the rest of us.

2 posted on 03/25/2003 1:08:36 AM PST by JoJo Gunn (Help control the Leftist population. Have them spayed or neutered....)

Causing injury is a crime, why do these idiots get a pass just because they are protesting??? Makes no sense to me. They marched across 6 lanes of traffic on Lake Shore Dr. in Chicago & backed up & stopped traffic in both directions. Now you or I go & do that & we'd be immediately arrested!

When these protests get out of hand, the demonstrators need to be taken to Federal Detention - and released at some date far in the future. If ever.

about time, but why do we need a specific bill for this? If an individual would behave that way, he would go to jail.

but why do we need a specific bill for this
We need a "new" and "better " law ... because the powers that be can't tighten the screws enough with the laws they have already.
If the goal were simply to prevent injury or penalize those who perpetrated it , they could simply enforce existing law .... the trick is to establish something that can be "molded" and modified later.
All this "dangerous speech" (like here at FR) has got to be addressed sooner or later.
The rights of the people are easier to dissolve if you do it slowly, just a little at a time.

Right. It's like my saying: "All Americans are guilty of a felony in some way, shape or form. We just haven't been arrested and prosecuted yet."

8 posted on 03/25/2003 5:09:31 AM PST by an amused spectator (Saddemocrat Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle)

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