[Bill Moyer]: So let's get the stand up, and then I'll follow you with the light.

Yes, sir.

Okay, here we go.

[crowd chanting]: George Floyd!

What’s his name?

George Floyd!

[Tom Clement, narrating]: What are the boundaries of free speech?

Across the country, activists are testing them.

[news broadcast]: An American artist has left his mark on one of Donald Donald Trump's towers, lighting it up in protest.

Lot of times when I talk about projections of legality, I always say it's a gray area.

But just with any technology, it can be used by either side.

NPR this weekend just reported on a group of self-described Nazis who have been projecting giant five story tall swastikas.

That's behavior we can't tolerate here in the state of Florida.

It was just too, too potent of a propaganda machine.

The Florida projection ban will definitely be litigated.

It's graffiti of a type, but just of of a new technology.

So we're we're rolling with the times.

I've seen a lot of protests over the years covering politics.

Usually there are banners, chanting, and sometimes the cops break it up.

[news broadcast] [news broadcast] I was covering a Senate debate in Pennsylvania when two men projected tax the ultra rich into my shot.

[news broadcast] I think the message came to very clearly.

[Tom Clement, narrating]: I thought the police would shut it down, but they didn't.

And I wanted to understand why.

What I found was an unsettled conflict in American law.

[Nathaniel Reed, reporter]: Thanks, have a good night.

[crowd chanting]: All day, all week Occupy Wall Street [Tom Clement, narrating]: Occupy Wall Street was one of the first movements to use projection protest.

[crowd chanting] We.

Are.

The 99 percent!

We.

Are.

The ninety nine percent!

We.

Are.

The ninety nine percent!

[pedestrian] Oh!

That’s hard.

[pedestrian] That is too cool!

[projectionist] They’re responding directly to it.

Yeah, I know.

Now let’s just do the chant.

We are unstoppable.

Another world is possible.

Let’s do that for a while.

[crowd chanting] We are unstoppable.

Another world is possible.

We are unstoppable [fade out] Since then, this form of protest has been on the rise as consumer projectors have become smaller, cheaper and more powerful.

(news broadcast) Their headquarters in San Francisco an activist projected very visible signs on the Twitter building criticizing Musk and protesting recent developments at the company.

[news broadcast] A call for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to step down.

The message reads sessions must go and fire sessions.

[news broadcast] In San Francisco, a cease fire and Gaza message was projected onto the Ferry Building last night.

The law professor answer is it depends.

Is the property private or public?

I think that projections that are most clearly problematic are those that are on private property, but even those on public property are relatively constrained.

And I think the government might have good arguments for why they should be unlawful.

Projection artists have the right to do projection art in all of the public forums that people are allowed to freely speak otherwise.

Most of the charges that I would see light projection protesters arraigned for were very low level nuisance charges that really reflected that police didn't know what to charge people with, but wanted to charge them with something.

So that's the shot.

That's exactly what I was looking for, because we've been projecting for so long, for over 20 years.

We know that we have a right to do it, and we've kind of set a precedent that we're allowed to do this.

What's the problem?

Officer.

[Tom Clement, narrating]: Robin Bell is probably the biggest name in projection protest.

[Robin Bell]: We did our first kind of well-known Trump projection in November of 2016, right after he got elected.

Then we did a large series of projections very regularly on his building throughout his first term.

[Tom Clement, narrating]: Those projections, onto the D.C.

Trump Hotel, made national headlines.

[news broadcast] Another message for the president overnight.

This one projected on to the Trump International Hotel.

[news broadcast]: A D.C.

based artist is using art to voice his frustrations with the Trump administration.

Robin Bell used a projector, [Robin Bell]: The first projection that truly went viral, The “Pay Trump Bribes Here.” That was insane.

From the moment we did the actual projection to when it went worldwide was three hours.

By midnight, we knew that we were on to something much bigger.

I think we did 24 interviews in 24 hours.

We got featured in nearly every publication in the planet.

When we first started projecting on the Trump Hotel, it was a lot more cat-and-mouse with the security than with the police, and we had to really kind of establish, no, we are legally allowed to be here.

You know, after about a year of it, they're just tired Like, they're tired of it, and then the D.C.

police got tired because, you know, we're like, “Call the police.” “You can't touch us.” “Were on public property.” When Trump said, “shithole countries.” We did project “shithole” on the Trump Hotel.

And we had a little emoji poop flying out of it.

I was seeing pictures of friends from D.C.

and posting about the projections on to the Trump Hotel.

While I was sort of initially, like, amused like many people.

I started thinking, what's the logical extension of this.

For somebody who studies the property torts, which I do as a scholar of property, those are trespass, which we think of as boundary crossings and nuisances, which are interferences with another's use and enjoyment of property.

This just keyed up my interest.

There are cases specifically about projections, one out of Nevada and the other out of Pennsylvania.

The Nevada court said this is not a trespass.

Traditionally, trespass has required a physical boundary crossing.

The Pennsylvania case, a nuisance action was alleged.

They weighed the speech interests of the projector really quite strongly and finding that it wasn't a nuisance.

I don't disagree that this is not properly within the purview of trespass.

I do disagree that this might be within the purview of nuisance.

[Bill Moyer] In this society the voices that are amplified are the voices with access to unlimited money.

Normal folks don't have that, but normal folks with a light end up much more visible in the public dialog.

This is Backbone Campaign’s warehouse space.

It's like Santa's workshop for activists We started with giant puppets.

[Tom Clement, narrating]: Over the years, campaign has used many forms of public spectacle, and these days, light projection is their tactic of choice.

And it became such a compelling tool that we started, you know, sharing it with others and training other people to do it.

So our purpose here is to support Starbucks workers who are unionizing all over the country.

You know, we internalize a lot of limitations around what's acceptable to do.

Always a little bit of like, [sharp inhale] triggers, some of that internal kid thing that doesn't want to get yelled at or scolded.

[Sam Cohen, lawyer] If the police have an incorrect idea of the law, you can't talk them out of it.

Your options are either to comply with them, even though what they're ordering you to do is unlawful, or get arrested and challenge it with a lawsuit.

Talking police out of things just doesn't work.

[suspenseful music playing] [news broadcast]: NPR this weekend just reported on a group of self-described Nazis who have been projecting giant five-story-tall swastikas.

So to be in our group, we are NatSoc Florida, but you don't actually have to be a National Socialist.

You know, we'll take anybody that's definitely at least a white nationalist.

We like to kind of coach them into our ideology.

[Josh Nunes] Um, yeah, kind of.

You know, people know me, but I try to keep my face off camera as much as possible because I work around people's homes.

I got to feed my kids.

A few months ago we could project high onto buildings and people can see our images for miles.

Versus this, where, yeah, we'll get a few thousand people to drive by, but it's just not nearly as impactful.

The main thing we're trying to do right now is gain membership.

You have a good day.

[Josh Nunes] Probably.

Earlier, a guy drove by and threw a roman salute at us.

So our people are around.

[car honking from highway] There's a happy guy right there.

The reason why we started researching the light projection was because we hadn't actually seen any, activist groups on our own do it.

And it turns out it was legal.

[news broadcast] Then on Saturday, also in Jacksonville, the message Kanye was right about Jews was scrolling.

I don't know if you.

I don't know if you.

It's hard to see, but it was scrolling outside of the football stadium during the big Georgia Florida game.

The first one was “Kanye is right about the Jews” and it was already huge in the media.

[news broadcast]: It's a reference to the series of antisemitic comments the rapper made recently.

By 10 p.m.

that night it was going viral.

you know, it went international, it was insane.

The cross/swastika stayed up for about half an hour just because we really wanted to kind of drive that one home.

So we were six feet below ground level right there, and kind of like tucked away in a little cove, shining up at that building.

There was a cop probably 50 yards from us.

Never saw a thing.

If you’re not in the path of the beam it's extremely hard to see where the light is coming from.

I haven't seen it.

It'll break my heart a little bit, but, yeah.

Oh.

Oh.

Christian fascism.

Well, that's pretty terrible.

Tonight we're going to be doing a projection onto Starbucks headquarters.

I'll be the liaison with any sort of interaction with security or the police.

And then we can have compassion for the security guards who are on their own learning curve about what's okay and what's allowed in this space.

No such thing as trespassing with light.

As long as we're not selling something, as long as it's not commercial speech, it's protected speech, protected First Amendment speech.

We'll we'll have about an hour beforehand nearby there where we'll park.

For folks who aren't used to seeing their aspirations or their values in the media light projection is particularly special.

this seems like a good spot right there.

So then why don't you come down and be right underneath, at the at the belly of the siren?

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty normal.

They.

They don't believe that.

That we're allowed to, project on to the, the building, but I'm just saying, you know, they could go ahead and call the Seattle police if they want to.

Later.

Over email.

The Seattle Police Department told me that anyone can project First Amendment speech onto public or private buildings.

But Seattle, like most other US cities, has no official policy about projection protest.

We knew from the moment we feel that the laser was going to be illegal, it was just too, too potent of a propaganda machine.

This can't go on.

Anti-Semitism and hate have no place in Florida.

And that's why I'm proud to announce HB 269.

What my bill did.

Is it it made it illegal to project an image onto a building without the written permission on hand from the owner of the building.

The First Amendment generally forbids governments from restricting speech based on the content or the medium of the speech.

The interesting carve out that the Florida legislators have done is the consent of the property owner.

It isn't an entire restriction on the medium.

It also isn't really a restriction of hate speech.

and so on some levels.

You know, I knew we were kind of pulling a loophole there.

We were exploiting something that hadn't been done before.

And if they project something that's hateful of a religious or or ethnic animus, then we're going to make it a third degree felony.

Hate speech is a difficult subject under the First Amendment, because the contours between speech that is likely to cause harm to other people and speech is simply expressing a negative opinion of other people.

It's hard to draw the line between those two.

I'm not sure if this Florida enactment will pass constitutional muster.

There were projecting a poop emoji on Trump Tower for like four years straight.

The moment we started, espousing our worldview, it was very, very quickly made illegal.

It, uh, This is one of these deceptively difficult questions.

Is a swastika hate speech?

I certainly think that a swastika is hate speech.

I'm a Jew.

Seeing a swastika makes me imminently fear.

And there's a lot of hate speech that really is First Amendment protected, but we find very uncomfortable.

So if you haven't committed a crime and you do, and you project something with religious or ethnic animus onto that building, you've just you've just carried out your free speech rights in the United States of America.

[Tom Clement]: Where’d you park?

[Bill Moyer]: Um, right around the corner.

Oh, nice.

Got my daughter with me.

Oh, right on.

Recruited her for the getaway.

We have one particular spot that we like because you get the the Capitol in the background.

For a while, we were able to project on that building was sort of impunity, but hopefully they won't see us, doing it for a minute.

We'll get some good shots.

It's hard to even use your fingers around here.

Here, ok.

Ok, there we go.

Phil Ateto: It’s pretty well focused.

I think it's pretty focused.

[Bill Moyer]: All right, thank you.

[Bill Moyer]: I’m gonna for sure.

[Bill Moyer]: Yeah.

Phil Ateto: Make sure we what?

[Bill Moyer]: We’re gonna check Those regulations [Phil Ateto]: Oh, gotcha, gotcha.

Yup Yup [sound of generator turning off] [Phil Ateto]: All right.

[Tom Clement, narrating]: But actually, that's not true.

In 2019, Capitol Police detained an activist, working with Robin Bell, for projecting “discrimination is wrong” onto a Capitol office building.

The charges were later dropped, but I still want a clarity on what exactly is legal.

When I emailed the Capitol Police, here's what they wrote back.

If an individual complies with the initial request to cease projecting, then an arrest is not made and fines are not given.

So, assuming all the officers are following the current policy, you could project anything you want on the Capitol Complex without punishment, until, you receive a warning.

[Sam Cohen]: Light projection is sort of the visual equivalent of yelling.

It is expression that is very loud for a moment and then it's gone.

It's if we say something smart, we might we might get people in power to think about things differently, [Molly Brady]: even though in some circumstances you might enjoy it.

You know, that's the fun of law is trying to think what rule for everyone.

No different than a flashlight.

You know, it's it's on and then it's off.

But it was effective and they hated it for that.

Given that many projections are temporary and lawsuits are expensive, we're not getting a lot of common law regulation of this.

For as much as I dislike Nazis, you know, they have a right to do what they do.

The intrusion onto the property is outweighed by the importance of protecting speech.

Many of the projections that were getting attention, largely urban elites, agreed with.

And so, there there was sort of, well, I like this message, so this seems great.

This is funny.

It's not hurting anyone.

It's temporary.

And it can't just be the content of the message that really decides which of these are lawful and which, not.

[Josh Nunes]: I don't, I don't mind if my worst enemies use light projectors.

I definitely think it should be legal.

I mean, it's another form of free speech.

It doesn't hurt anyone so long as you're not abusing people with it.

[Robin Bell]: But I would hate for those jackasses, though, to restrict other people's First Amendment rights.

I think that's a dangerous road to go down [Tom Clement, narrating]: As more groups turn to this provocative new medium, the debate over its proper role will continue to evolve.

Does the right to free expression outweigh property rights?

right to free expression outweigh property rights?

How committed are we, as a nation, to free speech?

Should some voices be restrained?

These difficult questions implicate our most fundamental rights, and their answers affect all of us.