Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) slammed recent anti-protest bills backed by Republican state legislators across the country, pointing out that America itself was “a democracy that started off as a protest that was called the Boston Tea Party.”

“George Floyd’s death last summer set off a wave of demonstrations against racial injustice and now a year later some Republican-led states look to crack down on the protests,” said CNN Newsroom anchor Jim Acosta to introduce the segment.

These laws, Acosta said, included stricter penalties for obstructing a public street in the course of a protest, protections for drivers who unintentionally injure or kill demonstrators, and harsher penalties for assaulting police officers and defacing public monuments.

“I have to ask you as someone that lived through the Civil Rights movement what do you make of these bills?” Acosta asked Clyburn.

Clyburn replied that he was “instructed by history” and mentioned the Jim Crow laws that were passed in the post-Reconstruction period, with the “separate but equal” doctrine affirmed by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson until being overturned in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education.

“So what I’m saying to people today,” Clyburn said, “we have got to stand up now and if I might use this word that my colleague Maxine Waters was chastised for, we have to confront injustice. That’s what we’ve got to do.”

“Be confrontational?” asked Acosta.

“Yes. We have to. We can’t sit idly by while you have a governor down there in Florida saying he’s going to allow what happened to the young lady Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, give immunity to the guy that ran over and killed her? Come on. This stuff is crazy.”

Heyer, 32, was killed in 2017 when James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of counterprotestors opposing the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA. Fields was found guilty of first-degree murder for Heyer’s death and five counts of aggravated malicious wounding for the other people he injured. In other words, Fields would not have qualified for immunity under the legislation discussed by Acosta and Clyburn, because those laws were drafted to only apply to situations where drivers unintentionally injure or kill protesters.

“We cannot sit by,” Clyburn continued. “And this is not about whether or not you are Black. This is about whether or not you are in favor of maintaining this democracy. A democracy that started off as a protest that was called the Boston Tea Party. That was the protest. That’s what led to what this country is today. So when people protest and you’re gonna criminalize the First Amendment…This is crazy stuff.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

The post Rep. Clyburn Slams GOP-Backed Anti-Protest Bills: America ‘Is a Democracy That Started Off as a Protest That Was Called the Boston Tea Party’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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