Urgent! Senate Bill 250
has passed the Senate!
As the petroleum and waste corporations continue to build heavy toxic industries in the center of residential areas across the state they have found a champion in Ohio Senator Mark Hoagland. The ex-Navy Seal has decided to make his fortune by raising private armies to protect the gas, oil, and waste barons from Ohioans who object to having their communities appropriated and their health and property threatened. His SB 250 adds penalties beyond the legal norms for trespassing or in any way harming or interfering with "critical infrastructure" operations. It changes penalties from misdemeanors to felonies. You can be held accountable to trumped-up felony charges for the actions of another person. If someone else attending is judged to have violated this broad vague law you can be fined up to 10 times the amount usually imposed for criminal mischief. It is designed to do one thing; stop the right of citizens and unionists to protest the conditions and risks that these companies force them to endure. We already have laws that protect private property from misguided individuals. This law protects billionaires from accountability.

Write to Representative Larry Householder (click link) to register your opposition to the bill. (I don't know what the house is calling its version of the bill yet.) Here are some ideas you can copy and paste to start your letter if you want to:
  • I am opposed to SB 250 because we do not need laws to protect toxic industries from Ohio citizens. We need laws to protect Ohio citizens from toxic industries.

  • I am opposed to SB 250 because there are already laws that protect private property from an individual with bad intent. This law targets citizens who are exercising their right to dissent from unjust  policies forced on them by a legislature that is harming their communities and not representing their interests. This law builds on those policies. It would never even have been drafted if we had legislators who represented us.

I am opposed to SB 250 because it is cookie cutter legislation that was written by corporate lobbyists and has appeared simultaneously in several states controlled by the oil industry. It has the American Legislative Exchange Council's stench all over it:     https://www.nlg.org/new-anti-protesting-legislation-a-deeper-look