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ACLU* national legal director David Cole warns that this new piece of legislation is a serious problem to free speech. He says that just discussing the boycott of Israel could land you in prison for 20 years and fined $1 million.
The right to boycott has a long history in the United States, from the American Revolution to Martin Luther King Jr.'s Montgomery bus boycott to the campaign for divestment from businesses serving apartheid South Africa. Nowadays we celebrate those efforts. But precisely because boycotts are such a powerful form of expression, governments have long sought to interfere with them — from King George III to the police in Alabama, and now to the U.S. Congress.
The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, legislation introduced in the Senate by Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) and in the House by Peter J. Roskam (R-Ill.), would make it a crime to support or even furnish information about a boycott directed at Israel or its businesses called by the United Nations, the European Union or any other "international governmental organization." Violations would be punishable by civil and criminal penalties of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison. The American Civil Liberties Union, where we both work, takes no position for or against campaigns to boycott Israel or any other foreign country. But since our organization's founding in 1920, the ACLU has defended the right to collective action. This bill threatens that right.
As a European myself I find it very strange that such a law can ever be officially proposed. And in the US of all countries where the freedom of speech in codified in the constitution.
What do you make of it?
*American Civil Liberties Union
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:00PM (3 children)
Then how do free speech zones work?
Right of the people at assemble
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:40AM
Then how do prepositions work?
Right of the people from assemble
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:40AM
Free speech zones works such to make it inconvenient for people to go there and thus not hearing your free speech. And also provides the thugs with a known place to intimidate any opposition and to identify and stalk them. Great, huh? ;)
Or people could be allowed to express themselves everywhere at anytime..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:33PM
Realistically, Free Speech Zones are a way of corralling people too stupid to figure out that they would reach more and be more effective online, and that they can organise their own photo-ops when and where they like, provided they're not interfering with others.