For the last month or so I’ve watched the Occupy ____ (you fill in the blank) rallies and, while I’ve been tremendously heartened by the number of people fed up enough with a system rigged to rob them of their future that they’re willing to demonstrate in the streets, I’ve been equally disturbed by something else I seen, the number of demonstrators being arrested, not for being violent, not for setting buildings on fire, not for overturning police cars. For the most part they are being arrested for simply exercising their right to assemble, their right to free speech and their right to seek redress from the government.
Often as not their crime is permit violation. Think about that for a minute. The tool that those in power use to suppress the demonstrators, to circumvent the democratic process so much a part of the American heritage is a permit. The founding fathers prized certain rights so highly that they included them in the FIRST amendment. They made that amendment the one that prohibited the government from abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. They didn’t say you had to apply for a permit to exercise these rights; they said you have these rights by law and by birthright. This country emerged from civil disobedience, from the actions of brave men who thought it their right have their grievances heard and addressed. The Minutemen didn't ask for a permit; they didn't need one.
Have we really come to a point where the constitutional rights Americans have fought and died to protect for over two hundred years can be negated by the action of your local city counsel or, worse yet, by a faceless bureaucrat for whom you never voted with the authority to issue or deny a permit. Certainly, there are instances when permits are need. Certain behaviors in public can be dangerous or harmful and need to be restricted but when permits are used to effect mass arrests in contravention of constitutional rights they are just plain wrong.