Petersburg Pilot -

A crowd of hundreds marched through downtown Anchorage last month calling on the governor and the legislature to increase funding for public education in Alaska. A few weeks later, protestors gathered on the steps of the capitol in Juneau with signs and songs emphasizing that same message.

And a few weeks after that, Governor Dunleavy proposed a piece of legislation that would create a new crime in Alaska: “obstruction of free passage in public places.”

The proposed anti-protest House bill, HB 386, makes it a class A misdemeanor –with prison sentences up to a year and massive fines– to “knowin...