Written by Ross Connelly   

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

The statement was made by Anatole France, a French poet, journalist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, who lived from 1844-1924. Were he alive today, he might rephrase his statement to indicate the rich and poor, having equal rights under the law, might also be forbidden to sleep or protest in Zuccotti Park in New York City, or other public spaces in Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Calif., in Seattle, Wash., in Washington, D.C., in Dallas and Austin, Texas, Chicago, Ill., Philadelphia, Pa., New Orleans, La., in Atlanta, Ga., Miami, Fla., Denver, Colo., Portland, Ore., and Portland, Maine, in Boston, Mass., and Burlington, Vt., or over 200 other public places found in myriad cities and towns across the country where the mayors and managers have seen fit to have police evict the citizens. And Anatole France might even make note that both the rich and poor are prohibited from sleeping in the open — with permission — on private land in the Lowell Mountains of Vermont when a private corporation wants to blast rock from the high ridge that abuts that land.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In 1937, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in De Jonge v. State of Oregon that "the right to peaceable assembly is a right cognate to those of free speech and free press and is equally fundamental." The Court stated the right to assemble is "one that cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles which lie at the base of all civil and political institutions."

Something of the reverse of the founders’ intent is going on in the official response to the people’s right to assemble and redress their government.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement — and it is a movement growing more by the day (just compare the non-coverage in the daily press during the first several weeks of the “Occupation” in mid- September with the daily coverage the protests receive now for an indication of its importance) — has put the First Amendment to the test in recent weeks. After the movement began at Zuccotti Park two months ago last week, the message is in the news each day that there is an unfairness to the inequality of wealth in this country, that the breakdown of the U.S. economy is wrong, and the inability of elected officials to govern for all the people must change. Citizens are indicating they have had enough of the trampling of the common good. From the White House to the halls of Congress to the meeting rooms of town councils and select boards in the smallest towns across the land, too many elected leaders seem deaf to what more and more people recognize as wrong: namely, inequality and an attack on the common good is not right. Instead, the elected leaders are doing their best to make sure people are punished for speaking up and speaking out. Too frequently, the response is not to defend the Constitutional right of people to assemble and speak but to treat the citizens as criminals.

When people having nothing to do with the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Oakland, Calif., murdered a person there while driving by earlier this month, the response of the city was to drive all the protesters away rather than deploy police to protect them. In Burlington, the same night, after a man camped in the park in front of City Hall took his own life, the response was to drive everyone from the park, rather than to send in more trained people to assist those there and police to protect the assembled. On the campus of the University of California at Davis, police pepper sprayed students who had assembled peacefully in support of Occupy Wall Street. In Seattle, police pepper sprayed protesters, including an 84-year-old retired school teacher, certainly of little threat to the public order. And in Zuccotti Park, the mayor sent in police who drove citizens out, destroyed tents, sleeping bags, personal belongings, and even the library of several thousand donated books set up by occupiers.

Why are police all over the country, public employees paid with tax dollars, being used to deny citizens their right to assembly and redress their governments? Why did a court in Vermont order “Occupy Lowell Mountain” campers to get off abutting private land where they had permission to be so a private corporation could continue its work to level the mountain top for an industrial wind farm? Why are police all over the country being used to break up attempts by people to speak up in protest of corporate power? Why aren’t police being used to protect the people’s First Amendment right to assemble?