Tag: protest

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The Right to Peaceful Assembly

Fresno Bee, October 19, 2025

Trump’s federal crackdowns risk eroding peaceful assembly rights

Now is a crucial time to think about our basic rights. Among the rights listed in the First Amendment are the rights to peacefully assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The right to petition and assemble allows us to gather in protests, marches and demonstrations.

It is antithetical to the idea of liberty to prevent people from gathering in public. But the right to assembly has often been at risk. Recent crackdowns against protest and dissent risk violating that right, as well as freedom of speech.

At a recent roundtable discussion of “antifa” and anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests, President Donald Trump celebrated his ban on flag burning, saying, “we took the freedom of speech away.” A Supreme Court precedent from the 1980s, however, allows flag burning. Trump’s policy is justified by appealing to an issue involving the right to assemble. He explained, “When they burn a flag, it agitates and irritates crowds, I’ve never seen anything like it, on both sides, and you end up with riots. So, we’re going on that basis.”

The right of peaceful assembly is not a right to rampage. The government can stop riots as a matter of public safety. But the threat of a riot can be used as a pretext for violating people’s rights.

The tension between liberty and public safety is real. We saw this during the COVID pandemic, when public gatherings were limited. National guard deployments could be justified in terms of public safety. If there really were riots, the right to assembly could be curtailed.

But this depends on the facts on the ground. And as a federal judge recently ruled, the president’s claims about protecting what he calls “war ravaged” cities is “untethered to the facts.”

Legal authorities should protect both protesters and counter-protesters, who each have a right to protest. But the presence of troops and the threat of arrest can have a chilling effect on ordinary citizens who are scared away from assembling. Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project, said of these deployments: “It risks chilling the rights to speak and to assemble. In other words, that very fundamental American right to protest.”

The right to peacefully assemble has been called a “forgotten freedom.” This right may seem so obvious that it is almost not worth thinking about. The right to assembly is about what we do with our bodies, where we gather and how we associate with other people. To limit this fundamental right to move our bodies and occupy space without good reason is tyrannical.

The American founders understood this, which was why they ratified the First Amendment. In the background was the case of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. As a young man, Penn was arrested in England for meeting in public with other Quakers. England had banned such “conventicles” in an attempt to harass dissenters.

This reminds us that the right to assemble is related to religious liberty (religion is a communal practice that involves public gatherings). The right to assemble is also important for political parties, social clubs, labor unions, and other gatherings of people.

This right has often been understood in relation to freedom of association, thought and expression. Freedom of assembly and association are linked with science and education. The advance of knowledge depends upon freedom of speech and of the press. Knowledge also develops socially. To learn wisdom, we must be able to meet and argue with other people. In the digital era, it is not only bodies that gather in public but also minds who should be free to meet together in cyberspace.

In his last speech, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the attempt by the government to prevent protests during the Civil Rights movement. He remarked that liberty is routinely stifled in China, Russia and other totalitarian countries. But in the U.S., we have freedom of speech, press and assembly. King said, “the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.” The rights to assemble, speak and petition are an important part of what makes American great.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article312530253.html#storylink=cpy

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The Problem of Protesting at People’s Homes

Protesters have targeted the private homes of public officials.  This is dangerous and misguided.  It risks violence and misunderstands political power and political protest.

In Idaho last month, after a woman was arrested for protesting COVID-19 restrictions, activists protested at the home of the cop who arrested her.  Last week in Fresno, California, anti-stay-at-homers protested at the apartment of a city council member and at the home of the mayor.  Also last week, a protest was planned at the home of California’s governor. 

There is symbolic value in protesting “stay-at-home” orders at the homes of public officials.  And people have a right to protest on sidewalks and city streets.  But these protests primarily seek to intimidate public officials.  And they are often merely opportunistic.  The Sacramento protesters explained this in a Facebook discussion.  One of the governor’s neighbors said the protesters should protest at the state capital.  An activist replied, “They won’t allow us to protest at the Capital…that’s the whole point of this.”

But a defiant protest at the Capital would be much more impactful, especially if the protesters got arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights.  In fact, 32 protestors were recently arrested in Sacramento for doing just that. 

Courting arrest is the point of civil disobedience as Thoreau explained, in his influential essay on civil disobedience.  When the law is unjust you should disobey it, Thoreau said, and willingly go to jail.  He wrote, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.”

This idea influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  The point of civil disobedience is to break unjust laws civilly and justly.  To be jailed for doing the right thing draws attention to the injustice of the law and the system that executes it. 

But protesting at the homes of public officials does not accomplish this systematic goal.  By focusing on the private homes of public officials, the legal system is ignored, which is where the real power lies.  Individual officials do not make laws, systems do. 

Some public officials may in fact disagree, in private, with the policies they execute in public.  But their duty is to execute the law.  The Idaho cop didn’t make the law.  He only enforced it.  Don’t protest the cop. Protest the law.

Mayors and governors have more power and discretion.  But they are not dictators.  They inhabit a bureaucratic system.  That’s why the proper place to protest is at city hall or the state capital.  Protesting where systems of power reside draws attention to policy problems.

A similar mistake is made by anti-Trumpers who have assailedTrump staff and cabinet member at restaurants and other non-official places.  But a person at a restaurant is not acting in an official capacity.  Politicians, of whatever stripe, have a right to be off-duty.

The tendency to personalize the political reflects our growing inability to distinguish between public and private.  Privacy has eroded in the era of social media and a 24-7 work-world.  Folks who lack a sense of privacy don’t appreciate the distinction between public roles and private persons serving in those roles.  But without that distinction everything becomes political and nothing remains of private life.  When the distinction between policy and personality is effaced, life becomes more polarized and less civil.

Finally, let’s note that protests at private homes are strategically misguided.  Such protests tend to turn off potential sympathizers.  The goal of political protest should be to generate outrage and empathy among possible supporters.  But a protest at a home or at a restaurant defeats that purpose by making the protestors appear to be vindictive bullies.  Public protests and civil disobedience are more effective at persuading others to see the justice of one’s cause.

Peeved protesters may get a thrill from demonstrating at a politician’ domicile.  But their anger is misdirected.  The official at home is not the problem. Rather the problem is what happens when the official is at work.  These protesters would be more effective if they were informed by the history civil disobedience and by a more systematic conception of political power.