New Paper Details Alarming Coordinated Attack on Right to Protest Across the U.S.

July 10, 2025

Washington DC — In the face of mounting attacks against protestors across the United States, a new paper  released today exposes a coordinated, escalating effort across the country to suppress protest and dissent through legislation, policy, and enforcement.

In “Our Silence Will Not Protect Us: Tracking Recent Trends in Anti-Protest Laws,”  racial justice and movement lawyering organization Advancement Project reveals that since January 2024, 103 bills—including 80 at the state level and 23 at the federal level—have been introduced or enacted across 27 states, seeking to redefine protest as a threat to public order rather than a constitutionally protected right. These efforts target not only how protests are conducted, but also where, by whom, and at what cost, raising serious concerns about the future of civic engagement in a democracy.

Movement organizers  across the U.S. joined Advancement Project Deputy Executive Director Carmen Daugherty for a press briefing on Thursday, including California-based organizer Maraky Alemseged of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and Atlanta-based organizer Brent Lyman of Fire Ant Movement Defense.

Carmen Daugherty, deputy executive director at Advancement Project, said: “We’re seeing a pattern of protests, especially led by Black, indigenous, trans, immigrant and youth organizers, that is being met not just repression in the streets, but with legal retaliation from those in power and from the state. It’s designed to silence and intimidate us, but the right to protest is protected under the First Amendment. It includes lawful gatherings, marches, demonstrations, activities that express political, social or moral views.

“The problem now is that the many laws that we highlight in the brief deliberately expand the definition of riot to include peaceful protest tactics. Some states now consider things like chanting slogans linking arms or even just being present at a protest where someone else commits a crime as grounds or arrests or for felony charges. This allows the government to paint all protests as dangerous to justify surveillance, arrests and harsh sentencing, and to chill future organizing before it starts.

“We’re calling on journalists, community organizations, elected officials to push back, to defend the right to protest, to monitor how these laws are being used, and protect those on the front lines, because protests have always been essential to change in this country and in the world, from civil rights to climate justice to labor movements to labor rights, silencing dissent is not just a legal issue, and it is a democracy issue.”

Maraky Alemseged, Los Angeles organizer at Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), said: “In Los Angeles, ICE raids and the militarized response against our collective outrage are a coordinated campaign of terror. They’re designed to provoke fear and suppress dissent. Black and brown communities are being disappeared, kidnapped, punished and surveilled by federal and local law and immigration enforcement, all while being blamed for the very violence being used against them.

“The US government routinely terrorizes Black people through brutality, colonization, poverty, murder, erasure and stoking division, and as soon as the people speak out and demand an end to this reign of terror, we are not only villainized, but criminalized, enforcing mandatory curfews, calling unlawful  assemblies, banning face masks, using military grade weapons against protesters, and diverting attention from the real issue at hand by creating false narratives of looting and rioting.

“And as these protests persist, we’re seeing protesters, community ICE watchers and even journalists also getting detained by local and federal police regardless of immigration status oe citizenship, so they continue to overfill their cages and line their pockets and puff out their chests with their grandeur shows of force, and expect the people to fall back and fall in line.  The US government hopes to violate us into silence and complicity. But instead, we’re being loud and we’re fighting for our families, for our friends, for our neighbors and our futures. We will not comply, and we will not be divided. We will fight for our people and win.”