I went to some palestine protests a while back, and was talking to my brother about the organizing, when revealed something I found pretty shocking, we (the protesters) had acquired a permit to hold the protest. Apparently this is standard policy across the US.
More recently, my University is also having protests, and in their policy, they also require explicit approval for what they call “expressive activity”. I’m pretty sure not having a permit has been used as an excuse to arrest students in some other campuses.
My question is as the title, doesn’t this fundamentally contradict the US’s ideals of free speech? What kind of right needs an extra permit to exercise it?
When I was talking to my brother, he also expressed a couple more points:
- The city will pretty much grant all permits, so it’s more of a polite agreement in most cases
- If we can get a permit (which we did) why shouldn’t we?
I’m assuming this is because of legal reasons, they pretty much have to grant all permits.
Except I think this makes it all worse. If the government grants almost all permits, then the few rare times it doesn’t:
- The protest is instantly de-legitimized due to not having a permit
- There’s little legal precedent for the protesters to challenge this
And then of course there’s the usual slippery slope argument. You’re giving the government a tool they could expand later to oppress you further. Maybe they start with the groups most people don’t like and go up from there.
“Free speech” is very much misunderstood as a form of carte blanche as your example demonstrates. It’s written as “Congress shall make no law…” etc., implying you’re protected only from the federal government, but as time and court cases and legal discourse have shown, there are limits and implications for lower legislatures to model from. The classic hypothetical example is “yelling fire in a crowded theater.” Can you? Yes. Should you? Unless there’s a fire, no, then it could cause panic and injury, and you’d be responsible. That sort of thing. (The US loves a lawsuit).
Tl;dr to answer your question: no.
Free speech is the right to say your opinion, however unpopular or silly it may be.
But who would misunderstand yelling fire as “free speech”?
Yelling “fire” is just an easily visualized situation to start the discussion about how freedom of speech is not a universal freedom. It cracks open the door to the idea that there are many situations where you’re not free and that it’s not even about your ability to scream or be heard, it’s about government persecution limitations.
Maybe. But then you have fundamentally misunderstood the term “freedom of speech”.
I call it an unneccessary discussion. You should better think of it as “freedom of saying your opinion”.
It does not mean yelling fire, it does not mean yelling I kill you, it does not mean false accusations, insults about your mother…
… That’s exactly the point. Starting a discussion with people who’ve fundamentally misunderstood the right. People who think they can say anything and you aren’t allowed to be mad at them. People who think their right applies to private property and platforms.
If it’s part of a performance, for example. I guess the point of the debate here is that context matters and that you can do it under very, very specific circumstances.