The Right to protest
The first amendment provides citizens with the right to Peaceful Assembly. Citizens can meet to discuss ideas, promote their opinions and disagree with others even if it is distasteful to the outside world. This could take place in the form of a parade, peaceful protest or anything else that does not involve violence. Furthermore, the freedom of association protects the private lives of those who protest and disallows law forces to take action and forcefully make you stop. Also, under the first Amendment, people have the right to freedom of speech which further helps the population with peaceful protesting. Peaceful protesting in America truly started with the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Junior. He posed the idea that we should not fight back with our fists but rather our words and our feet. This idea has grown ever since and is large factor in the world of peaceful protest today. However these freedoms have often times been rejected, as law enforcement have seen the potential for violence and have forcefully made protestors stop. For instance, on November 2011 hundreds of protestors gathered together at the campus of UC Davis, as part of the protest of the occupy Wall Street movement. They were doing nothing dangerous and were sitting peacefully to prove their point. However soon after they began, police officers came to the site and continued to pepper spray those who were protesting. These type of events happen not just at Universities but in the real world as well. On October 2011, 175 members of the occupy Chicago act were arrested after refusing to leave past the curfew time at Grant Park. This was just one of the few instances of unlawful arrests as the Occupy Wall Street era surfaced. While different courts have made different rulings on these cases, the truth is that these rights are protected under the constitution and peaceful protestors should never be arrested for doing so.
The first amendment provides citizens with the right to Peaceful Assembly. Citizens can meet to discuss ideas, promote their opinions and disagree with others even if it is distasteful to the outside world. This could take place in the form of a parade, peaceful protest or anything else that does not involve violence. Furthermore, the freedom of association protects the private lives of those who protest and disallows law forces to take action and forcefully make you stop. Also, under the first Amendment, people have the right to freedom of speech which further helps the population with peaceful protesting. Peaceful protesting in America truly started with the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Junior. He posed the idea that we should not fight back with our fists but rather our words and our feet. This idea has grown ever since and is large factor in the world of peaceful protest today. However these freedoms have often times been rejected, as law enforcement have seen the potential for violence and have forcefully made protestors stop. For instance, on November 2011 hundreds of protestors gathered together at the campus of UC Davis, as part of the protest of the occupy Wall Street movement. They were doing nothing dangerous and were sitting peacefully to prove their point. However soon after they began, police officers came to the site and continued to pepper spray those who were protesting. These type of events happen not just at Universities but in the real world as well. On October 2011, 175 members of the occupy Chicago act were arrested after refusing to leave past the curfew time at Grant Park. This was just one of the few instances of unlawful arrests as the Occupy Wall Street era surfaced. While different courts have made different rulings on these cases, the truth is that these rights are protected under the constitution and peaceful protestors should never be arrested for doing so.