Credit Rachael Pongetti/Courtesy Photo
Organizers who have led local protests in the past year say they are disappointed, but undeterred by House Bill 1, otherwise known as the anti-riot bill.
“We’re never going to stop protesting,” said Haley Morrissette, North Florida regional organizer for Dream Defenders. “It’s the American way. We won’t stop taking to the streets to build people power.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law Monday. The bill was introduced last year as protests carried out throughout the state and country in response to the killing of George Floyd
. Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis, Minnestota police officer charged with murder and manslaughter for causing Floyd’s death, was convicted Tuesday and is scheduled to be sentenced in June.
Florida Is Latest Hot Spot for Anti-Protest Legislation
Tear down a Confederate flag in Florida and a protester could be headed to prison. Itâs all part of the same national movement to silence dissent in the wake of the George Floyd uprising.
Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times via AP
Protesters in St. Petersburg, Florida, demonstrate against police brutality following the police killing of George Floyd, May 30, 2020.
Last summer, after George Floyd died under Derek Chauvinâs knee, protesters in Pensacola, Florida, held a weekâs worth of rallies and sit-ins. On June 6, those protests reached a dramatic peak as protesters linked arms on the Pensacola Bay Bridge on the westernmost edge of the Florida Panhandle. As they blocked traffic, protesters demanded that the cityâs mayor come to the bridge to respond to their policing reform demands. Mayor Grover Robinson soon arrived in a bright-yellow rain jacket.