Arkansas activists get doxxed
Public information request reveals names of paid staffers canvassing for petition
Perhaps unsurprisingly, activists and canvassers who had volunteered or partook in abortion rights campaigns in the last few months have been subjected to antiabortion harassment.
Arkansas is one place where it’s occurred. Rebecca Bobrow, director of strategy for Arkansans for Limited Government, described what happened and the reasons for it.
Since the petition was certified, they’ve collected signatures to meet the required threshold to get it before voters. They need 90,704 people to sign before July 5. Her group has collected about 75 percent of the required total.
Seventy-nine canvassers were paid to collect signatures. By state law, groups employing political workers must report their names to the state. Antiabortion activists learned who they were through a Freedom of Information Act Request.
“I would say that, while all of those folks who have been hired to collect signatures are proud of the work they're doing and they're not hiding, there's really no other reason that I can see for those names to be released other than to incite harassment from folks who are opposed to the work that we're doing,” Bobrow said.
Antiabortion actors have threatened and harassed these people since the names became public. They had been subjected to them before, so Bobrow isn’t entirely sure whether things have worsened due to the disclosure of their identities. But this past weekend was eventful in that regard. One woman got a death threat.
“I'm not comfortable making that direct correlation at this point,” Bobrow said. “But I know that there were a couple of incidents over this past weekend where law enforcement had to be called.”
As part of safety efforts, Bobrow’s group doesn’t canvass alone. They always have at least two people with them, and they aren’t reluctant to call the police.
They continue to persevere through the effort.
“The doxing was meant as a tactic of intimidation, and we are not going to be intimidated where everyone is feeling really fired up about hitting our signature deadline,” Bobrow said. “And as far as I know, no volunteers or canvassers, who are the ones who were doxxed, have said that they're stopping.”