A local ACLU official claimed Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina are working to pass an anti-rioting bill in “retaliation against the Black Lives Matter movement.”
The ACLU’s North Carolina field manager Angaza Laughinghouse was just one of several activists who criticized House Bill 805, which would increase the penalty for rioting and looting, according to CBS 17.
The bill, sponsored by Republican North Carolina Speaker of the House Tim Moore, would charge people with a felony if “in the course of the riot the person causes property damage in excess of fifteen hundred dollars ($1,500) or serious bodily injury.”
Attorney Dawn Blagrove with Emancipate North Carolina — an organization that hopes to dismantle “structural racism and mass incarceration across North Carolina” — said the bill is “racist” and “anti-Black Lives Matter.”
The group’s community organizer, Kerwin Pittman, argued that when North Carolina State University won championships and “individuals took to the streets and things was damaged, you didn’t see a bill like this come out.”
However, Moore called accusations that the bill is racist “ridiculous.”
“This law applies to anyone who would go in and destroy property,” Moore said. “Like so many Americans, I was outraged at what I saw at the U.S. Capitol. The destruction that happened there.”
He added that he saw the destruction that occurred in North Carolina, particularly in the state capital, following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and noted that they were “not protests, but what became riots, looting, assaults.”
The state House passed the anti-rioting bill. It will now advance to the Senate.
Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said that while he believes people should be prosecuted for rioting, he has concerns about the bill, as it does not address any of the recent racial equity proposals the state has proposed, according to the Daily Caller.