Philanthropy Must Safeguard Our Right to Protest, a Key Pathway to Progress

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When 42 Defend the Atlanta Forest protestors faced charges of domestic terrorism for their opposition to a controversial new police training facility, widely referred to as “Cop City,” the Atlanta Solidarity Fund stepped in to provide bail support. In a striking blow to community support networks, the three fund coordinators were then arrested under allegations of money laundering and charity fraud. Soon after, the Georgia Office of the Attorney General proceeded to issue RICO (racketeering-influenced and corrupt organizations) indictments against the bail fund organizers and an additional 58 activists, and some individuals now face charges with sentences of up to 20 years in prison. 

Members of my organization, Solidaire Network, have been contributing to the bail fund and helped resource the ballot referendum campaign to allow voters to decide if the Atlanta police training facility should move forward. We also provided urgent security funding to the Southern Center for Human Rights when they faced threats of violence in 2020, and again this year to support their work coordinating a legal strategy and ensuring that bail fund organizers and protestors have strong legal representation. We were glad to see that the Barred Business Foundation, an Atlanta-based nonprofit, filed a lawsuit last week challenging the Georgia law that restricts organizations from providing bail support.

We’ve taken these steps because we believe strongly that funders are not just bystanders — we must act as agents to safeguard our constitutional right to free speech and peaceful assembly. It’s time for philanthropy to invest in the urgent security needs, long-term security infrastructure and legal advocacy of movements that enable us to protest and engage in other forms of dissent as a key pathway to social progress.

Growing political repression

Indigenous leaders and land defenders warned us several years ago that the fossil fuel lobby was working to pass anti-protest laws after formidable opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock. Since 2017, a whopping 300 bills aimed at curtailing organized protest have been introduced, including measures that hit protestors with domestic terrorism charges. (The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law maintains a digital tool that tracks state and federal laws restricting the right to peaceful protest.) Just last week, it was reported that the fossil fuel industry is pressuring Congress to widen the definition of and punishment for “attacks” on pipelines, with climate activists fearing they could be targeted for actions as peaceful as sit-ins or banner drops.

States have also introduced or passed legislation that criminalizes impeding traffic during protests. A proposed law in North Carolina would give organizers jail time and financial liability for disrupting traffic. In Louisiana, a new law would give organizers of such protests a $5,000 fine and a felony charge that could mean a year in prison with hard labor. At the same time, activists are facing escalating vigilante violence, including a trend of protesters being hit by cars and shootings in Wisconsin and New Mexico. Worse yet, a new series of state bills would grant immunity to motorists who injure protestors with their vehicles.

Nonprofits and higher education under attack

Students and activists across the country are facing doxxing, threats of violence, wrongful termination, expulsion, evictions, arrests and mob violence due to their organizing for peace in Israel-Palestine. Palestine Legal has been critical in providing legal aid and advocacy during this time of unprecedented repression of the largest Palestinian rights mobilizations in U.S. history. It was poised to act because of the long-term investment it received from Solidaire and other grantmakers, first as a four-year partner in our Movement Infrastructure Fund and later as a recipient of rapid response funding.

Violence and intimidation by vigilantes, coupled with proposed repressive laws, work in concert to threaten academic freedom and silence dissent from nonprofit institutions. A pair of alarming bills were recently passed by the House and are now making their way through the Senate. Lawmakers may soon consider S.4136, legislation that would empower the Treasury Department to revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofits without due process. This would grant the executive branch unprecedented authority to penalize and target political adversaries by categorizing organizations as "terrorist-supporting" without a formal terrorism designation. 

A separate bill, S. 4127, would codify a particular definition of antisemitism, known as the “IHRA definition,” which blurs the line between anti-Jewish bigotry and constitutionally protected speech about the state of Israel when federal agencies, such as the Department of Education, investigate allegations of anti-Jewish discrimination. Colleges and universities could face lawsuits and lose federal funding if they fail to adhere to these standards. The lead drafter of the IHRA definition, Jewish lawyer and scholar Kenneth Stern, has vocally opposed such efforts to codify the definition as a means to silence dissent. Yet another bill, H.R. 8242, seeks to exclude students arrested during campus protests from participating in federal student loan forgiveness programs. 

Philanthropy can help protect our civil liberties

Philanthropy must protect front-line organizers before freedom of speech and assembly is stripped from us all. Funders must protect movement leaders and organizations with rapid support for urgent safety priorities and with multi-year funding for scaling security infrastructure. Our Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund, along with the Piper Fund’s Right to Protest Fund, the Emergent Fund and the Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism’s security grants, are great models and places to contribute. 

One of the lessons we have learned over the past decade is that when lawmakers successfully target political speech and activism around a particular issue, be it Palestine or abortion access, they will replicate these tactics to target organizations and individuals working on other issues. We must stand together against these existential attacks on our ability to improve the lives of people in the U.S. and around the world by supporting nonprofits that work on legal advocacy and that mobilize legal strategies against legislation threatening our constitutional right to free speech and peaceful assembly.

Another major lesson we have learned in our four years of providing security grants to grassroots organizers is that our movements require an ecosystem of values-aligned service providers from and for movement organizing. The following are just a few we’ve worked with. Vision Change Win provides holistic community safety and security support, assessments and training rooted in intergenerational traditions from Black, queer, trans and feminist liberation movements. Shake Technologies, our security provider, offers digital security services, training and forensics in alignment with the values of movements for gender, disability, racial and climate justice. Equality Labs is a movement provider that takes a trauma-informed approach to digital and physical security and resilience, and is rooted in the struggle against caste apartheid, white supremacy and gender-based violence. 

Movements need a robust legal, digital and physical safety infrastructure, and we must scale this industry massively and consistently — not only in moments of acute crisis. Philanthropy cannot leave front-line organizers with the burden of safeguarding our civil liberties and collective safety. We must join the fight before our constitutional rights to freedom of speech and the right to assemble are gone.

Rajasvini Bhansali is executive director of Solidaire Network, a community of donor organizers mobilizing critical resources to the frontlines of social justice.