The Washington, D.C. city council has approved a bill that allows police to arrest activists who are non-violently demonstrating in front of someone’s home if they have not notified the police, if the protest takes place at night, or if they wear masks.

The Orwellian-sounding “Residential Tranquility Act” had been an on-going effort by Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh. Activists with Defending Animal Rights Today and Tomorrow had been protesting in Dupont Circle to pressure Goldman Sachs executive Michael Paese as part of the campaign against the animal testing lab Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Dupont residents had said they felt “terrorized” by the protests. However, the protesters weren’t breaking the law. They were within their rights. Or, as Cheh told the Examiner, they “beat the system.” The new law was passed to criminalize their First Amendment activity.

Home protests and wearing masks at protests are both controversial, but should they be outlawed?

The news coverage of this has been incredibly superficial. Mask-wearing protesters are depicted as terrorists. But the press has ignored the fact that the reason many activists wear masks is precisely because of these draconian crackdowns on protests. [For more on this, see "5 Reasons for Activists to Cover Their Faces at Protests."]

And home protests may make people uncomfortable, but that’s the point. Protests are supposed to make people uncomfortable. Otherwise, it’s ineffective. The local ACLU office wrote an excellent letter of opposition elaborating on this. If these activists are committing crimes, the ACLU said, the police can arrest them. If not, don’t restrict their First Amendment rights just because you don’t agree with their issue or you don’t like them in your neighborhood.

In some ways, Mary Cheh is right. These activists are “beating the system.” The system allows free speech up to the point it is effective. The fact that these protesters are making executives uncomfortable, and the police have largely been unable to stop them, is truly what makes them a threat.

Home protest by animal rights activists in Santa Cruz. Photo by AP/WSJ.

The “AETA 4,”—Joseph Buddenburg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope, and Adriana Stumpo—have been indicted for “conspiracy” to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. As justification of the charge, the indictment lists three specific acts:

1. A protest on October 21, 2007, at an animal researcher’s home. The government says this amounts to “threats, criminal trespass, harassment and intimidation.” In the criminal complaint, the FBI said that on this date “protesters trespassed onto Professor Number One’s front yard and rang his doorbell several times. The group was making a lot of noise and chanting animal rights slogans (“1, 2, 3, 4 open up the cage door; 5, 6, 7, 8, smash the locks and liberate; 9, 10, 11, 12, vivisectors go to hell”)…”
2. A protest on January 27, 2008, at an animal researcher’s home. The government says this amounts to “threats, harassment, and intimidation.” In the criminal complaint, the FBI said that on this date approximately 11 individuals demonstrated at the homes of multiple researchers. “At each residence, the individuals, dressed generally in all black clothing and wearing bandanas over their nose and mouth, marched, chanted, and chalked defamatory comments on the public sidewalks…”
3. Use of the Internet. They allegedly “used the Internet to find information on bio-medical researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz.”

Even more telling, though, is what is not listed in the indictment. In the criminal complaint and the FBI press release, the government mentioned the above allegations along with two other incidents—the only two incidents even approaching a “gray area” between protected speech and illegal conduct.

• At one protest attended by the defendants, a researcher “struggled with one individual and was hit with a dark, firm object,” according to the FBI. (February 24, 2008)
• A stack of fliers titled “Murderers and torturers alive & well in Santa Cruz July 2008 edition” was found at a local coffee shop, Café Pergolesi. The fliers said “we know where you live we know where you work we will never back down until you end your abuse” and listed home addresses and telephone numbers. The FBI used video surveillance to allegedly link the flier distribution to the defendants. (July 29, 2008)

Now, to be very clear, the details in an indictment aren’t the final word in any criminal case. They never reveal too much of the prosecution’s hand. They do, however, lay the backbone of the government’s case and put the prosecution’s best foot forward.

Omitting the most controversial, potentially-illegal activity, and instead focusing on protests that involved chalking slogans and chanting, sends a very clear message of where this is all heading. This case and others like it are not about underground groups like the Animal Liberation Front, they are not about “violence,” they are not about the real potential for violence.

They are about using the “War on Terrorism” to chip away at basic First Amendment rights and criminalize dissent.