As a former member of Act Up who spent much of my younger life protesting in the streets, your article is particularly chilling to me. The idea that the right to protest is threatened is antithetical to all the American values I revere, and which helped Act Up focus public attention on the HIV crisis our representatives were ignoring. Dramatic street protest worked for us; without it, untold more people would have died before effective treatment for HIV was developed.

I have a question.

Do you see any correlation between heavy-handed legal tactics being taken against protesters and manufactured rule by minority? By that I mean, do you see gerrymandering and voter suppression playing a role? Are Republican politicians in an artificial minority actually trying to suppress the protesting views of the majority?