Mostly students arrived in the Florida Capitol on Friday to protest for LGBTQ+ rights.
Just as the Florida House of Representatives was voting to support what has been described as “Don’t Say Gay 2.0,” a legislative proposal (HB 1069) that includes restrictions on how pronouns can be used in public schools, a crowd of around two hundred mostly young people marched from the Florida State University campus to the fourth-floor rotunda in the state Capitol Friday, decrying what they called a legislative attack on the LGBTQ+ community.
As protesters swarmed the rotunda and began chanting loudly, Democrats left the chamber to join them, including Jacksonville Rep. Angie Nixon and Pinellas/Hillsborough Rep. Michele Rayner-Goolsby.
Right-wing media attacked the legal and pre-planned protest as ‘another insurrection,’ apparently referring to the Jan 6th GOP Insurrection at the nation’s Capitol building that resulted in five deaths and hundreds jailed.
One right-wing media outlet called these students “radical trans activists” and described the peaceful protest as “crazed,” while another right-wing outlet called the protestors, “loud and obnoxious.” A third right-wing outlet described the protest as the “Leftist storming” of Florida’s Capitol.
Comparing 200 students chanting in the State Capitol to the violent insurrection on Jan 6th that cost the lives of five persons, including Capitol police officers, is just one of the many tactics the right-wing media uses to gaslight their readership into believing that the nation is at war between the Left and the Right. And it doesn’t hurt their bottom line either to sensationalize an every day constitutionally given right to free speech and assembly.