The right to protest

During a pro-Palestine rally in Brooklyn this month, NYPD officers tackled and arrested reporter Reed Dunlea who was covering the event, part of a pattern of cops’ heavy-handed approach to protests that have flourished in the aftermath of Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent military response.

One Albany lawmaker is on the case, but not to help safeguard the principle of open political speech; Democratic Queens Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato has recently introduced an astonishing bill that would make “blocking of a public road, bridge, transportation facility or tunnel” a domestic act of terrorism, a Class D felony.

Street blocking already is a crime and protesters should be hit with appropriate charges, but domestic terrorism?

Public protest is not a danger, but essential to freedom as the First Amendment protects “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” The First Amendment does not have a clause about a right to not be inconvenienced.

This is nothing new; historical protest movements that are accepted or even revered today — from the Boston Tea Party through the Civil Rights Era marches — were often looked at with skepticism and hostility at the time.

Yet as enlightened as we know thing of ourselves, the tide is turning back against civic action, with primarily Republican legislatures striving to push through multiple new anti-protest laws in the last few years, often in direct response to the nationwide racial justice demonstrations that erupted in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.

These bills have been written to practically allow motorists to run down protesters on the street and bar demonstrators from receiving public benefits — ideas that go well beyond preserving public order and into punishing free speech. New York should be standing against these authoritarian impulses, not joining them. Pheffer Amato and co-sponsors Sam Berger and Marianne Buttenschon should be ashamed, though fortunately the bill doesn’t seem to be getting much traction.

That’s not to say that anyone should want or expect a free-for-all when it comes to our streets and public spaces. Not every single issue warrants mass, disruptive protest, and we’ve come to accept reasonable restrictions on how these actions can impact everyone else. It is, of course, still an offense to block roadways, and those who do can and should expect dispersal and potential arrest.

That’s the trade-off that’s made when you engage in this type of protest action, as it has always been. Civil disobedience is when you are willing to accept the consequences, including fines and jail, for violating what you consider an unjust situation. Protesters have been arrested for such actions, yet it would be ludicrous to suggest that they should be made pariahs for it.

Breaking shop windows and stealing during protests is also not political speech, but the abuse of political speech as cover for criminality, and we do again have laws to deal with that. We don’t need to go above and beyond, particularly when the enforcement seems clearly aimed at the content of speech, a clear constitutional issue.

We may disagree, sometimes strenuously, with some of these protesters and their aims, but we must adhere to the principle that they have no less right to espouse them than any other political opinion.