Mullin, Gene rep
<h2><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kevin 22nd and Gene?</font></h2>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">last dem holdout?</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1461428694403_2297" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 32px; color: rgb(241, 13, 50);"><span id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1461428694403_2296" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; font-weight: 700;">LATE BREAKING ASM <span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">Kevin</span> Mullin tweeted last night that he will be voting "aye" on SB 254.</span></span><span style=" line-height: 32px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"> </span><span style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 32px;"><a rel="nofollow" title="https://twitter.com/kevinmullin/status/723628029302300672" target="_blank" href="http://www.yesonca49.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fkevinmullin%2Fstatus%2F723628029302300672&e=d0ef04f66a12c44bc464bfb75d6d7e3a&utm_source=yesonca49&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=e_r&n=10" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(25, 106, 212); outline: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> Tweet him a thank you now</a>. #SB254 #LetThePeopleVote</span></font></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Committee Members<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>District<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Office & Contact Information</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shirley N. Weber (Chair)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Dem - 79<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Contact Assembly Member Shirley N. Weber</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Capitol Office</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">P.O. Box 942849, Room 3123, Sacramento, CA 94249-0079; (916) 319-2079</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matthew Harper (Vice Chair)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Rep - 74<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span></font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contact Assembly Member Matthew Harper</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Capitol Office</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">P.O. Box 942849, Room 2002, Sacramento, CA 94249-0074; (916) 319-2074</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Travis Allen<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Rep - 72<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Contact Assembly Member Travis Allen</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Capitol Office</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">P.O. Box 942849, Room 4015, Sacramento, CA 94249-0072; (916) 319-2072</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Richard S. Gordon<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Dem - 24<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Contact Assembly Member Richard S. Gordon</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Capitol Office</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">P.O. Box 942849, Room 3013, Sacramento, CA 94249-0024; (916) 319-2024</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evan Low<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Dem - 28<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Contact Assembly Member Evan Low</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Capitol Office</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">P.O. Box 942849, Room 2175, Sacramento, CA 94249-0028; (916) 319-2028</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kevin Mullin<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span></span>Dem - 22<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Contact Assembly Member Kevin Mullin</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Capitol Office</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">P.O. Box 942849, Room 3160, Sacramento, CA 94249-0022; (916) 319-2022</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Adrin Nazarian<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Dem - 46<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=" white-space: pre;"> </span>Contact Assembly Member Adrin Nazarian</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Capitol Office</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">P.O. Box 942849, Room 4146, Sa</font></div>
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<p style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.538em; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); line-height: 19.9833px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">California has been a hotbed of both legal and illegal activity in the name of animal rights lately.<br style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" />
<b>The <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2008-03-30-meat-recall_N.htm" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">largest beef recall in history began here</a>, after an undercover investigation by an animal welfare group</b>. Meanwhile, California universities have been the site of a protracted battle between animal experimenters and underground activists using threats and property destruction. And last week, the secretary of state announced that <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/851185.html" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">a proposal to eliminate some of the cruelest confinements</a> in animal agriculture will go before voters in November.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are disparate tactics, yet they all threaten animal businesses.</font>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Enter <a href="http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a19/" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">Gene Mullin</a>, a member of the California State Assembly and a Democrat, who has introduced <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/wp-content/Images/ca_aepa_draft.pdf" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">AB 2296, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act</a>, to stifle the First Amendment rights of animal advocates. The law would prohibit the posting of publicly available information on activist websites, restrict access to public meetings, and require heavy-handed penalties for non-violent civil disobedience.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All in the name of fighting “terrorism.”</font>
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<strong style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Background</font></strong>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In November, 2006, Congress passed the <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/aeta-analysis-109th" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act</a>, a sweeping, overly broad law that was, ostensibly, introduced to target underground activists like the Animal Liberation Front. It was <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/2006/11/13/aeta-passes-house-recap/" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">pushed through Congress, with little discussion or debate</a>, by a coalition of corporations and industry groups including the <a href="http://www.beef.org/" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">National Cattlemen’s Beef Association</a>, Pfizer and the Fur Commission. It wraps up a range of activity—from non-violent civil disobedience to property destruction—as “terrorism” if it targets an “animal enterprise,” and, most dangerous of all, it has made many activists fearful of continuing their work because they could be labeled a “terrorist.”</font></p>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The government has used the passage of the AETA to cozy up with these “animal enterprises” even more. In March, 2007, Ricardo Solano Jr., a lead attorney in the “animal enterprise terrorism” case of the SHAC 7, gave a keynote speech at the Animal Agriculture Alliance’s Stakeholders Summit. According to <a href="http://www.dairyherd.com/directories.asp?pgID=675&ed_id=6303" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);"><em style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Dairy Herd Management Magazine</em></a>, he told the executives present: “The fact of the matter is that there are extremist individuals and groups that will go through great lengths to put you out of business. The recent passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act sends a clear signal to animal-rights extremists that if their activities cross the line, the federal government will not stand idly by.”</font></p>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nevertheless, the new law hasn’t been used. You might remember that, after the passage of the federal Animal Enterprise Protection Act in 1992, corporations immediately began pushing for more legislation, and more power. They got what they wanted with the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. But now that victory is simply being used as a political springboard for even more legislation, providing even more power.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Key provisions in the California bill</em>:</font>
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<strong style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prohibits the publication of publicly-available information</font></strong>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most significant section of the bill says that “no person, business, or association shall knowingly publicly post or publicly display on the Internet a home address, home telephone number, or image of any employee of an animal enterprise or other individuals residing at the same home address of the employee of an animal enterprise” if the posting is intended to do one of a few things.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It must either be intended to:</font></p>
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<p style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.538em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Incite a third person to cause imminent great bodily harm to the person identified in the posting or display, or to a coresident of that person, where the third person is likely to commit this harm.”</font></p>
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<p style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.538em; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); line-height: 19.9833px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Or</font></p>
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<p style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.538em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Threaten the person identified in the posting or display, or a coresident of that person, in a manner that places the person identified or the coresident in <b>objectively reasonable fear for his or her personal safet</b>y.”</font></p>
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<p style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.538em; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); line-height: 19.9833px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here, lawmakers are trying to </span><b style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">push the limits of what a long history of First Amendment law has established</b><span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. They’re singling out a group of people solely based on their political beliefs, and restricting their speech because of those beliefs. If someone posted information about an executive at Wal-Mart, because of a labor dispute, that wouldn’t be prohibited</span><b style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">. Or, perhaps a better comparison would be someone who posts information about an abortion doctor (a situation which, unlike animal rights campaigns, has led to murder).</b></font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beyond that, though, these clauses are so ambiguous as to be meaningless. Or, in the hands of an ambitious prosecutor, so ambiguous as to be quite dangerous.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The biggest problem here is the use of amorphous term “reasonable fear.” The word “eco-terrorism” is batted around recklessly by industry groups, in a scare-mongering campaign that has included <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/2006/05/01/nyt-ad/" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">full-page ads in major newspapers</a> and even stooping so low as to <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/2006/05/01/soft-core-eco-terrorism/" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">call a children’s movie “soft-core eco-terrorism for kids</a>.” They are doing everything they can to create this fear through scare mongering: that’s the point. In light of this political climate, it’s impossible to discuss “reasonable fear,” because industry groups are throwing all their weight into making the unreasonable seem reasonable—into making the public afraid of non-violent activists, so they can push a political agenda.</font>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Furthermore, lawmakers are twisting and redefining the idea of “incitement.” <a href="http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/faclibrary/case.aspx?case=Brandenburg_v_Ohio" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)</a> established that incitement is more than mere advocacy, and it is more than simply providing information: it must tend to cause “imminent lawless action.” That’s a bit of a stretch with the Internet, unless someone were to post the information and then send a fiery email to someone saying, “Go do something illegal!” The reality, though, is that this hasn’t happened. Lawmakers are targeted websites for merely posting publicly available information in a political context.</font>
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<strong style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Restricts access to public meetings</font></strong>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bill “imposes a limitation on the public’s right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies” on the grounds that, among other points, some researchers have been the targets of property destruction and threats.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bill also notes, as a justification for this restriction, that “The information used to target the victims of these crimes often is obtained by making a request for public records from a government agency.” It’s quite curious that lawmakers can make such a bold statement about the methods of underground activists responsible for the illegal actions in California, considering they have not been caught.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Catching the underground activists, though, is only part of the intention. More importantly, researchers and corporations could use this fear mongering to restrict publicly available information that is used by a wide variety of legal, mainstream groups in their campaigns.</font>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Creates new crimes and disproportionate penalties
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The bill spells out civil remedies for individuals whose public information is posted publicly, including suing for “damages to that individual in an amount up to a maximum of three times the actual damages, but in no case less than four thousand dollars ($4,000).”</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lawmakers also went to great lengths to spin standard court procedures into fear-mongering tactics. For instance, the bill spells out that courts “shall take all action reasonably required” to protect animal enterprise employees, including restraining orders and bans on photography. And in court, employees may use a pseudonym out of fear of animal rights advocates. These are all tools available to the court in extreme situations, but lawmakers have gone out of their way to emphasize them here seemingly to enforce the “terrorist threat” posed by activists.</font>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps most disturbing, though, are the<b> disproportionate penalties.</b></font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the slaughterhouse workers in Chino, Calif., whose abuse of cows led to the beef recall, <a href="http://www2.dailybulletin.com/ci_8657766" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">pleaded guilty recently to three misdemeanors</a>. Undercover video showed Rafael Sanchez Herrera and others trying to force sick cows into the kill chutes by stabbing a cow in the eye with a stick, dragging sick cows with forklifts and shooting high-pressure hoses into their mouths. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail and a $100 fine.</font></p>
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<b style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under this legislation, someone who uses non-violent civil disobedience outside of a slaughterhouse in protest of these abusive practices could receive the same amount of jail time, and a $5,000 fine.</font></b>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tagged as: <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/tag/animal-enterprise-protection-act/" rel="tag" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">Animal Enterprise Protection Act</a>, <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/tag/state-terrorism-laws/" rel="tag" style=" padding: 0px; margin: 0px; text-decoration: initial; color: rgb(196, 4, 4);">State Terrorism Laws</a></font></p>
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<div><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/04/14/495728/-California-Considering-Censoring-Political-Bloggers#"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/04/14/495728/-California-Considering-Censoring-Political-Bloggers#</font></a></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">draft: <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/wp-content/Images/ca_aepa_draft.pdf">http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/wp-content/Images/ca_aepa_draft.pdf</a></font></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">UC favors? <a href="http://www.calstate.edu/air/legislative_report/2008/07.03/story3.html">http://www.calstate.edu/air/legislative_report/2008/07.03/story3.html</a></font></div>
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