How the right turned protest into a criminal enterprise

“Anti-riot” laws: Six months after the Black Lives Matter movement reached its peak, 25 states introduced 53 bills conflating protests with riots. By the summer of 2021, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee all had anti-riot laws on the books. No actual violence or property damage is required to be a “rioter” in most of these laws, just creating “imminent danger” to people or property is enough. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, police unions and sheriff associations lobbied hard for these bills in at least nine states.