America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/americas-most-under-appreciated-right/603910/

84 62 7 years ago

Something I wish was addressed is what the right to peaceable assembly even looks like in the age of technology. I guess the same could be said about free speech, but I feel the greatest threat to these rights isn't from the government, but from tech monopolies whose platforms have become defacto "town halls" or "town squares". If Reddit, Twitter, Discord etc, are how people assemble and communicate in the 21st century, then what are the implications of these companies being able to shut down groups unilaterally?

Ididntdothis2• 7 years ago

I think this is the big risk with infrastructure being privatized. The big tech companies can shut down things they don’t want to see in public.

Now imagine roads being fully privatized. Yes, you can assemble somewhere but the owners of the roads can make sure that nobody gets there.

virtuous_signal5• 7 years ago

Right, I can definitely see the danger with something public being taken private, but I feel like it's happening more often in the opposite direction. I just read this recently (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/business/walmart-edna-tex...) and it's another example of the same thing. If a business/platform/whatever becomes wildly successful, to the point where some large % of the poluation relies on it, then when should it be regarded as "infrastructure" where people's individual rights come into play?

throwawaysea3• 7 years ago

Thinking out loud here, but I don’t think this is as real a risk as it may first appear to be. In most cases I think the owners of the road would rightfully make sure their property is used per their rules. But if we had a society-wise protest (like in Hong Kong), the general laws/rules would be ignored anyways and not much changes between the public and private scenarios.

The problem with today’s protests in America is that it is mostly extreme views from a fringe segment of society that are represented, rather than moderate/balanced views. I’m not sure why so much attention is given to these protests, because it seems like a really poor signal to use for any purpose. Others who may disagree have no accessible avenue to represent counterpoints due to a lack of psychological safety, sometimes a lack of physical safety, and due to a lack of time (especially if you have a family). My gut feeling is that if it became harder to hold those protests (due to public versus private infrastructure), we wouldn’t complain much as a society.

Lastly, the legal right to assembly is regulated in America, by time manner and place regulations. Protesters often ignore those laws and block infrastructure they have no right to block, ignoring the law. I think they should be arrested by force then, but my point is I don’t know that the public versus private angle but will matter to those crowds anyways if other laws don’t matter either.

SllX4• 7 years ago

Replace Reddit, Twitter, and Discord or any of the zillion other social networks that exist, the existence of which undermines your concerns from the start, and put in something more traditional like a mall, a private cemetery, or the local coffee shop.

You can assemble as much as you like in any of these places during business hours. There might be some quality to them, the availability of open space, good seating, amenities, etc. that make them the best for the type of assembly you wish to engage in. You might think how great it is that anyone can basically assemble here, and exercise their first amendment rights, plot how they’re going to take The Man down a few pegs and discuss how evil capitalism is over Starbucks Frappuccinos or how there should be a constitutional amendment against flag burning. Whatever floats your boat.

The property owners of these places also have rights, they’re called property rights. Just because you appreciate their general accessibility and other qualities that make them a nice place to meet and politically organize doesn’t make them any less private property than they are, nor does it take away from the right of the property owners to approach your assembly and tell you lot to knock it off and go somewhere else. And the beauty is, you can go somewhere else and engage in the same activity. The amenities in your existing “assembly hall” of choice might be nice, but they’re not yours to demand.

Now to make this a little more 21st Century, there are a plethora of means to communicate, assemble, and organize over the Internet that don’t depend on the amenities of reddit, Twitter, Discord, Facebook, Hacker News, Snapchat, iMessages, TikTok, etc. If the one that you’re on now doesn’t want you there, go somewhere else, try Mastodon out or make a blog or mailing list. You’ve got options, and so long as you’ve got options and there’s no one single state sanctioned social network to depend on, I have no more sympathy for someone demanding that Reddit let them post whatever they want than I do for the group that gets kicked out of the food court at the mall.

This newfangled technology, for all the importance we seemingly as a society ascribe to it, just isn’t that important to the general functioning of society as demonstrated by the previous hundreds of millennia we’ve existed and organized into societies of some sort without the help of social media.

The exercise of your right to peaceably assemble looks exactly as it always has, with the same stipulations and limitations that it always had. It is in fact, easier to exercise these rights by using modern technology, but it isn’t strictly necessary to have modern technology to exercise your rights.

virtuous_signal5• 7 years ago

I like that there is a logic and consistency to this "hyper-capitalist" approach, but the founders could not have had internet platforms in mind when they wrote the rules. Back when the country was 10,000x smaller, then yes, meeting in person at the equivalent of a mall would empower a group enough to keep the authorities worried. But now? Could anything like the umbrella movement in Hong Kong happen without the organizing power of social media?

harimau7777• 7 years ago

An essential part of the "town square" is that it is that it is a central place where people can be heard. The fact that zillions of social networks exist is irrelevant since only a few of them have the public scope and size such that they act as a modern town square. The same is true of physical spaces.

The right to peaceable assembly doesn't the same as it has in the past because in the past the center of society was in public rather than private places.

notatoad2• 7 years ago

The "Town square" has never given you a global audience.

Reddit, twitter, and discord are not the equivalent of a Town square, they're a global square giving normal people access to an audience they never would have previously had access to.

I get that you have opinions about this, but pretending that the right to have your tweets promoted to an audience of millions and the right to free assembly are in any way the same is just muddying the waters.

throwawaysea3• 7 years ago

I would argue that the physical town Square no longer exists and that the same space for discussion has been subsumed by Reddit and Twitter and such, even if they also include a more global square.

harimau7777• 7 years ago

I'm not sure that I agree with that. We now live in a global world where the issues effecting people have shifting from a local and state level to a national and global level. Therefore, in order for the reach of a modern day town "town square" to be comparable to those in the past, it would also need to be national or globabl.

mistermann4• 7 years ago

Reddit, twitter, and discord are not the equivalent of a Town square
pretending that the right to have your tweets promoted to an audience of millions and the right to free assembly are in any way the same is just muddying the waters

One might say that pretending that:

- because two issues aren't identical, they do not have similarities

- because the 1st amendment does not extend to private corporations, then no free speech (in the generic sense, that precedes the 1st amendment) limitations are occurring

...is also muddying the waters.

I find it interesting how it seems that the ability to detect nuance is largely dependent upon the topic of discussion.

virtuous_signal5• 7 years ago

So what I think of as "free assembly" way back when, is the private meetings that our founding father had in taverns and homes when they were planning the rebellion. Today I would consider that to be, say, Antifa (or whatever group you like) organizing via whatsapp or facebook groups (and maybe to some extent Twitter). My concern is when the companies behind these platforms shut down groups that they don't like. Sure, the participants could theoretically just meet in person to do their planning, but in a country as big as ours that simply won't happen.

whateveracct3• 7 years ago

Well the first amendment also includes freedom of the press, which inherently involves the amplification of speech to reach the masses. So I think the Internet is easily covered.

Invictus02• 7 years ago

People can communicate by typing in yourprotestwebsite.com and interacting there. Having the right to assemble doesn't mean the government has to make it easy for you: and not to mention, having the internet at your disposal makes organizing a protest infinitely easier than at the time of the nation's founding.

virtuous_signal5• 7 years ago

Having the right to assemble doesn't mean the government has to make it easy for you

There's a good active/passive distinction to be made here. For facebook groups, say, I would consider shutting down a group to be an "active" measure - since if facebook were to do nothing, the group would continue existing. But I do see how one could view facebook's allowing the group to remain to be an active "support" of the group.

mistermann4• 7 years ago

Whether the government has to do something vs should do something seems similar to the question of whether Western democracies are truly democratic, or theatric.

grecy3• 7 years ago

Assembling peacefully is OK in the USA, unless the authorities don't like it, then it's not OK.

Like Occupy wall street when loads of people were arrested just for assembling.[1]

Of course, there's always the classic "arrested for resisting arrest" [2] too.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/19/naomi-wolf-arr...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeDsO5R8Xr0

Even when you know the law, and follow it very closely, you can still be arrested.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Moe1-8rguk

Kalium2• 7 years ago

It's important to remember that even fundamental rights are subject to things like time, place, and manner restrictions. The right to free speech does not generally include doing so at 150Db at 2am in a residential neighborhood. It also sometimes includes restrictions like not blocking public right-of-ways while assembling in public. Freedom of religion does not extend to freedom to engage in the practice of human sacrifice.

I understand that not everyone shares this understanding. I also understand that not everyone agrees that such restrictions are reasonable.

grecy3• 7 years ago

I understand and agree with everything you said.

My understanding is that around 2000 people were arrested[1] for peacefully assembling. It wasn't 2am, and they were not sacrificing any humans.

In the case of Naomi being arrested that I posted above, she very clearly knew the sidewalks are public, and she was very clearly not breaking any laws, and was arrested anyway. Of course charges were later dropped, because the Police very well knew they had nothing on her.

So when the Police in the USA don't like your perfectly legal use of 'right at assemble' they arrest you, fingerprint you, make sure you get a record and are out of the way for a while, then just kick you out the back door when they're sick of you.

That doesn't sound so great to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street#Arrests

unlinked_dll3• 7 years ago

the point of protest is to disrupt however. Limiting the ability of a peaceful assembly to be disruptive effectively neuters that assembly.

jancsika• 7 years ago

The problem with such generic reminders is that they could easily affect the flow of conversation by being automatically plastered asymmetrically across any forum or social media network at very low cost. For a small amount of money I could essentially pick at random five amendments out of the bill of rights and concern troll them on social media forums while ignoring the others. There's no alarm bell that goes off when someone does that.

To counter this you could make at least one concrete link between your list of potential concerns to the OP's comment about Occupy.

harimau7777• 7 years ago

I agree with you that all rights have some sort of limitation. However, I think a fair question would be wether it is possible to meaningfully cause change while operating within the limitations that are currently placed on freedom of assembly.

gdhbcc• 7 years ago

If it can be subject to restrictions then it is simply not a fundamental right, it is merely a privilege.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5• 7 years ago

Many of these cases are dismissed on constitutional grounds. And therein is the problem: “the process is the punishment”

They make it awful to be arrested and detained, and know the case will be dismissed but that doesn’t matter.

https://www.russellsage.org/publications/process-punishment-...

throwawaysea3• 7 years ago

My understanding is that the arrests at occupy Wall Street were because of charges like trespassing, and violation of the time manner and place regulations that govern the right to assembly.

Note that the city won the most notable lawsuit that was filed: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/occupy-brook....

That said, a number of other lawsuits were never ruled on, but rather settled out of court: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/occupy-wall-street-nyc-reaches-...

tus88• 7 years ago

Republicans have threatened to strip Planned Parenthood of its tax-exempt status

What on earth has that to do with public assembly?

whateveracct3• 7 years ago

I'm not sure, but I do know the court ruled that defunding Planned Parenthood was a violation of their first amendment rights. But I don't think assembly was it?

jeffdavis• 7 years ago

Strange to use the word "most" without much effort to compare to other rights.

And it also doesn't really define "underappreciated" very well.

blzrdnofreespch• 7 years ago

Worth mentioning this right is often shut down by bullshit police. In Berkeley they shut down protests over police brutality after Eric Gardner died by shooting tear gas into the crowds and beating whomever they could. I’ll admit the next day they were more tame (thanks to all the videos catching their abuse) but I’ll never forget seeing four officers beat up some female student twenty feet away. Disgusting.

aSplash0fDerp• 7 years ago

Digital surveillance has created somewhat of a dilemma for those that just want their voice heard and has perverted public assembly along the way.

As mentioned, when the topic of assembly is Okay, its fine and dandy, but if its only OK (ex. Pot rally) or deemed non-PC, the facial ID exploits, IMEI catchers and LPR's ensure a detailed record of attendees (more than in generations past) which is more than the "I got the t-shirt" souvenir most expect.

Data brokers (public, private,government) have weaponized the first amendment in many ways and it has been acknowledged in Hong Kong by the obfuscation needed for peaceful assembly.

Its better to offer surrogates and dark money in a system like that, which goes against the principles of democracy, but it is what it is.

Its the same way outside of America too:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/this-student-attende...

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/german-student-jakob-l...

America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly

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