\n\n“In the wake of last year\u2019s Black Lives Matter protests, Republican lawmakers are advancing a a number of new anti-protest measures at the state level \u2014 including multiple bills that specifically make it easier for drivers to run down protesters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most recent example of such a law came Wednesday, when Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a new law<\/a> that effectively allows drivers to hit people with a car in a specific set of circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the new law, an Oklahoma driver will no longer be liable for striking \u2014 or even killing \u2014 a person if the driver is \u201cfleeing from a riot … under a reasonable belief that fleeing was necessary to protect the motor vehicle operator from serious injury or death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The measure also creates new penalties for protesters who obstruct streets or vehicle traffic, including hefty fines of up to $5,000 and as much as a year in jail.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If the recent spate of anti-protest measures in Florida, Iowa, and Oklahoma is disturbing on its face, however, context<\/a> does little to make it better. There is a specific history in the US of the far right using cars as weapons, and it\u2019s not hard to see how bills like the one that is now law in Oklahoma might only make things worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most notable example is from August 2017: Heyer, 32, was struck and killed and at least 19 others were injured when neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr. rammed a crowd of counterprotesters<\/a> in Charlottesville. Fields has since been sentenced to life in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s more than that single incident. According to Ari Weil<\/a>, the deputy research director for the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, there were at least 72 incidents of cars driving into protesters over a relatively short span in 2020, from May 27 through July 7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Examples<\/a> aren\u2019t<\/a> hard<\/a> to find. There\u2019s even a Wikipedia page<\/a> specifically dedicated to \u201cvehicle-ramming incidents during George Floyd protests.\u201d And as Weil explained<\/a> in an interview with Vox\u2019s Alex Ward last year, \u201cthere\u2019s an online environment that for years has been celebrating and encouraging these types of horrendous attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat\u2019s particularly worrisome is where those memes spread,\u201d Weil told Vox. \u201cI know of at least four cases where law enforcement officers were sharing these in Facebook groups. [Fields] shared these memes twice in two months before his attack, and other planners of the Unite the Right rally shared these, too.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Even more concerning, it\u2019s not always just random people driving through protests. In several cases, police have also used their cars as weapons against protesters. In Detroit last June, an officer drove his police SUV through a crowd<\/a>, sending protesters flying; two New York police officers<\/a> did likewise at a Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n