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Criminalization

Bellevue City Council Adopts Ordinance Criminalizing Protests

On Tuesday evening, May 2, the Bellevue City Council voted to adopt an ordinance making protests at U.S. Congressman Adam Smith’s house illegal. The ordinance changes the city’s definition of criminal conduct to include targeted residential protests. The ordinance states that any gathering of people “with four or more persons” in a protest that is “targeted, directed or focused at a particular occupant of the residence” would be a gross misdemeanor. “Protest means any protest, demonstration or picketing activity including but not limited to marching, congregating, standing, posting, parading, demonstrating, picketing, with our without signs, with or without making audible or amplified noise.”

Decades Of Stigmatization Fueled Threat Of Pregnancy Criminalization

In the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, there has been increased movement toward criminalization of abortion. The Fifth Circuit Court recently ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to rescind guidance permitting the use of telemedicine for mifepristone, one of the two medications used for medication abortion. The US Supreme Court on Monday announced a one week stay on the Fifth Circuit’s order, once again allowing the FDA to permit telemedicine abortion.

Let’s Talk Capitalism, Drugs, And The Drug War

Let’s talk about capitalism, drugs, and the drug war. Capitalism warps our relationship with substances. It creates conditions for misuse — like despair, alienation, and a future devoid of hope — and then criminalizes that very same use. It locks people away, eliminates so-called surplus labor, and profits from their caged bodies. This alienation — a concept developed by Karl Marx — refers to the feeling of being disconnected from your work, your community, and your own humanity. Capitalism reduces people to mere cogs in a machine. When you feel like a cog, you often seek ways to escape that feeling.

Police ‘Sweeps’ Of Homeless Camps Are Worse Than You Think

Police “sweeps” of homeless encampments aren’t what you think — they’re much worse. I know, because I’ve been a victim of one. The Supreme Court ruled last year that unhoused people can be punished for sleeping outside, even when no shelter or affordable housing is available. Enforcement often involves “sweeps” where officers destroy or confiscate property and arrest or fine unhoused individuals. To make matters worse, President Trump just announced that he wants to strip almost $4 billion in funding from permanent housing programs, dumping close to 200,000 more people onto the streets.

Kentucky’s Anti-Camping Law Has Pushed Rural Homelessness Into Hiding

In many U.S. cities, advocates for America’s growing homeless population say, homelessness itself is being treated like a crime. Last year, the Supreme Court gave cities the green light to ban people from sleeping and camping in public, allowing them to crack down on encampments even when there are no shelter beds available. In July, the White House announced an executive order making it easier for cities and states to remove unsheltered people from the streets and force them into medical facilities and institutions. That headline came alongside news of broad, Trump-backed encampment sweeps in Washington, D.C. and the threat of federal mobilization in other big cities.

Venezuela At UNSC: ‘We Believe We Are Facing Imminent US Attack’

On Friday, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, alerted the UN Security Council that Venezuela strongly believes a US military attack is imminent. He characterized the situation as the latest aggression in decades-long attempts to oust first President Hugo Chávez and now President Nicolás Maduro. “The plan is clear,” he said during an emergency meeting. “It is once again about executing the operation that already failed: overthrowing the legitimate and constitutional President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, to install a puppet regime and turn our country into a colony.” When questioned by the press, Moncada elaborated on the sense of urgency.

Amid Local Failures And Federal Cuts, Advocates For Unhoused Step Up

It’s been more than half a year since the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation spent four days clearing out an encampment near the BU Bridge in Cambridge, and Gemma Byrne has yet to see any of the people who were displaced by what one witness described as “the most inhumane sweep she has seen in her approximately 10 years of being unhoused.” Byrne is an organizer for the material aid and harm reduction program Warm Up Boston, which distributes supplies to encampments and has developed connections with their residents. Homelessness and fringe housing get more attention in the bitter cold months, but the work continues in the heat, as do haunting memories of what came last December.

Trump’s Invasion Of Washington DC Costs Over $1 Million A Day

President Trump mobilized the D.C. National Guard under the guise of restoring security in the nation’s capital — despite D.C.’s crime rate being at a 30-year low. What began as a deployment of 800 D.C. National Guard troops has grown to encompass 2,091 as of this writing, as Republican governors send hundreds more. Trump hasn’t just complained about alleged crime in the district — he’s placed a target on people experiencing poverty and homelessness. Claiming that we’re “getting rid of the slums,” Trump has called on troops and police to forcibly remove unhoused people from the city. Federal law prohibits deploying the military on U.S. soil, except under certain extraordinary circumstances.

New Study: Criminalizing Homelessness Doesn’t Reduce Homelessness

A recent study shows that encampment bans and other policies that criminalize homelessness don’t keep people from living on the street. The analysis did not find any reduction in homelessness in any of the cities studied as a result of such ordinances. The study examined the effect of ordinances enacted between 2000 and 2021 across the 100 most populous U.S. cities, using data pulled from Continuums of Care — local entities that administer federal homelessness funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The study, published in May in the Policy Studies Journal, looked beyond camping bans and included laws criminalizing public drunkenness, urination or other actions that are criminalized when conducted in public but not behind closed doors.

Criminalizing Homelessness Doesn’t Work; Housing People Does

In the largest eviction of a homeless encampment in recent history, around 100 unhoused people were recently forced to vacate Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest — or else face a $5,000 fine and up to one year in jail. The forest was the last hope for the encampment’s residents, many of whom were living in broken down RVs and cars. Shelters in nearby Bend — where the average home price is nearly $800,000 — are at capacity, and rent is increasingly unaffordable. “There’s nowhere for us to go,” Chris Dake, an encampment resident who worked as a cashier and injured his knee, told the New York Times.

Venezuela Condemns Washington’s Criminalization Of Migrants

Venezuela has categorically condemned the United States government’s persecution of Venezuelans in the US, calling it an “infamous and unjust criminalization of Venezuelan migrants.” The Venezuelan government’s official statement in this regard, issued on Sunday, March 16, likens Washington’s position to “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horrors of Nazi concentration camps.” The statement condemned in strong terms the persecution of Venezuelan citizens in the US, including the expropriation of their personal property, assets, businesses, vehicles, and bank accounts.

Police Diversion Programs Face Uncertain Future

Atlanta, Georgia, is one city that has gone back and forth about whether to continue funding its Policing Alternatives and Diversion Initiative. At the start of 2025, the PAD program suspended its services because of contract negotiations with city officials. PAD responds to calls through Atlanta’s 3-1-1 municipal services line and offers services like legal support, shelter and housing placements, and outreach. In 2024, the program fielded more than 1,800 service requests with an average response time of 19 minutes, according to its annual report. Nearly half of the calls PAD responded to were to help people meet their basic needs.

An Upcoming Supreme Court Case Threatens To Criminalize Homelessness

As America’s affordable housing crisis grows, especially for those of retirement age, Black folks continue to be pushed into homelessness at a disproportionate rate. Advocates argue that an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling may make it even more dire. Earlier this month, the court announced that it would hear a case that will essentially decide if people experiencing homelessness can be issued jail time, tickets, and fines for sleeping on the streets — even if there are no shelter alternatives available for them. The case will be heard either this spring or in the fall.

Georgia Frames Cop-City Protest As Criminal Conspiracy

When does lawful protest become criminal activity? That question is at issue in Atlanta, where 57 people have been indicted and arraigned on racketeering charges for actions related to their protest against a planned police and firefighter training center that critics call “Cop City.” Racketeering charges typically are reserved for people accused of conspiring toward a criminal goal, such as members of organized crime networks or financiers engaged in insider trading. Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr is attempting to build an argument that seeking to stop construction of the police training facility – through actions that include organizing protests, occupying the construction site and vandalizing police cars and construction equipment – constitutes a “corrupt agreement” or shared criminal goal.

The Media’s Role In Criminalizing Climate Protest

Before you can criminalize protest, you have to vilify the protesters. And to do that effectively, you need the media's help. Evlondo Cooper at Media Matters reviewed media coverage of climate protests in the U. S. from May 30th, 2022 to July 31st, 2023 for a new study. He documented a trend that we've been seeing too. Not only has the U. S. media perpetuated the idea that climate protesters are uniquely disruptive, and radical, but their general failure to cover anything about climate protest other than the disruption that they cause, further perpetuates this thinking. Evlondo's research found that while multiple national outlets have run stories about climate protesters being annoying and destructive, not a single broadcaster has run even one story on the fact that nearly half of the states in the U. S. have now passed laws criminalizing protest.
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