Free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as well as Article I, Section 8 of the New York State Constitution. US Citizens have exercised this right from the Boston Tea Party to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and from the Anti-Nazi Boycott of German goods in 1933 to the Boycott of Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. 

Since 2016 however, 28 states have passed anti-boycott laws, affecting everyone from substitute teachers to construction workers. In these states there are anti-boycott statements that must be signed by engineers, writers, journalists, students and even storm victims applying for disaster relief. It's the new McCarthy Era, but this time it is the Israel Lobby taking away our free speech rights.

I urge my mid Hudson Valley state representatives, both in the Senate and in the Assembly, to protect all New Yorker's First Amendment right to boycott.