If Trump wins the election, US protest movements could face serious crackdowns

The Knox county commission was questioning a property developer one evening in April three years ago when protesters quietly filed in to their auditorium and raised their fists in the air.

If he returned to the White House, Trump could direct a militarized response to protests and pressure congressional Republicans to pass legislation that would impose nationwide penalties like those already in effect in Tennessee.

Tennessee is a thoroughly red state where the GOP holds a supermajority in its general assembly. Last year lawmakers temporarily expelled two Black Democratic representatives who staged a noisy protest calling for gun control legislation in the state house chamber. In August 2020, Republicans passed a bill that increased penalties for blocking a street or sidewalk and created a new felony offense for protest encampments on state property, in addition to making disrupting a meeting a more severe category of misdemeanor.

To Amelia Parker, a Black Lives Matter activist who now serves on the Knoxville city council, it is not surprising that Every wound up being perhaps the first person to run afoul of such laws.

An African American army veteran who is disabled with post-traumatic stress disorder from two tours in Afghanistan, Every became politically active after struggling to find services during a period of homelessness in Knoxville, the home town she returned to after leaving the military.

In the past, disruptions had not been uncommon at the Knox county commission. Like many local governments, the body had just weathered a tense period as they dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic, during which protesters opposed to mask mandates would sometimes start shouting at them during meetings, recalled the former county commissioner Dasha Lundy. The same thing would happen when people grew upset over zoning decisions, she said, but, to her knowledge, nobody from either group was arrested.

Shortly before the trial started on 8 April, Winter opted to plead guilty in exchange for six months of unsupervised probation and paying court costs. She was already on probation for felony attempted murder after shooting her husband, with whom she said she was in an abusive relationship, and feared a conviction that would send her to jail. Two other protesters, Carrie Hopper and Kevin Andrews, also took plea deals.

After about six hours of deliberations, the jury found Every guilty, but acquitted the three other defendants. She was sentenced to nearly a year of probation. Her attorney, Andrew Beamer, has appealed the verdict.