Coming Soon: The Real Free Speech Threat

Around the world, environmental protesters are facing escalating repression—from harsh laws with life-altering prison sentences to fines to protesters arreseted near "critical infrastructure" to violent attacks. Corporations are suing protestors and NGOs, comparing protest to organized crime. Governments are growing increasingly comfortable branding environmental protestors as “domestic terrorists.”

The media is largely participating in the rhetorical “othering” of protestors, opting in most cases to focus on the disruption that protest causes rather than the change it seeks. In our new season, we take an an in-depth look at how climate protest has evolved in recent years, where this backlash is coming from, how it’s grown so quickly, and what it feels like to be someone who’s concerned enough about the future of humanity to join a protest, only to find themselves facing violence and legal ramifications.

 

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