For Immediate Release
April 22, 2024
BATON ROUGE – The Supreme Court recently announced it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. This decision leaves in place a lower court order that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The Black Southern Women’s Collaborative (BSWC) has previously spoken on the dangers of limiting constitutional rights to protest in opinion pieces from Ashley Shelton who leads the Power Coalition for Equity & Justice in Louisiana and Tameka Greer who leads Memphis Artists for Change in Tennessee. You can read those pieces here and here. If you report on this issue, Shelton and Greer, and other members of the BSWC are available for comment.
“The Constitution’s first amendment protects our rights to freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble; despite this, we see efforts to criminalize protests rather than address the reason people are protesting in the first place,” Greer said. “This is deflection. Policymakers shouldn’t be punishing those who exercise their right to demand answers for their grievances.”
“This ruling undermines the heart of the U.S. Constitution,” Shelton said. “Anti-protest laws are not about safety. If they were about safety, my First Amendment rights would enjoy the same protection as my Second Amendment rights. Instead, these policies are specifically designed to silence Black people, persons in poverty, and persons from marginalized communities. If we do not resist such measures, we will see escalating campaigns to silence Black people, people of color, religious minorities, and others. Once that happens, we will have no way to challenge laws that relegate many to second-class status.”
“All people deserve to live in a society that sees and responds to their needs,” said Nsombi Lambright Haynes, executive director of One Voice and a member of the BSWC. “Preventing the right to gather sends the message that our communities have no right to remedy injustice. The courts are telling the American people that we must accept injustice today, tomorrow and forever. Such messages eliminate confidence in our democracy and in our judiciary.”
“This latest play demonstrates extreme white supremacist governing,” said Phyllis Hill, founder of the BSWC. “It is in line with other efforts to strip away our rights, such as Roe vs Wade. They are stripping away our rights and eliminating our right to voice dissent through voting.”
###