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Protesters Rights

Introduction

The First Amendment of the United States grants safety for different forms of protest by protecting the right to peacefully assemble in public and the right to free speech. Individuals and Groups that want to exercise their First Amendment rights by protesting can have their voices heard anywhere from parks, sidewalks, and public spaces. Regarding the amount and the location of protesters, some cities require you to have a permit to carry out your protest. Protesting has and will forever be an important part of American life and history because it garners attention to urgent issues and injustices. There are violent and non-violent protests in social movements that can be found in past centuries from the Civil Rights Movement to the anti-war protest. Today, protesting remains relevant because it's the only way for people to speak about the injustice happening in the United States. For example, the Black Lives Matter protest that protested against police brutality and racially motivated violence against Black people/ African Americans. Even if a protest does get violent it doesn't give the Police the right to be violent towards protesters. Given that protesting is the only legal way to get our voices heard, protesters shouldn't be treated like criminals when they are fighting for justice and equality.

Non-Violent Protests

Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement chose non-violence as a way to get rid of systematic racism, discrimination, inequality, and racial segregation. The people trusted and followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s plan of non-violent protest and resistance. Martin Luther King led non-violent protesters to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, to make their voices heard. According to Miller (2018), “ For 381 days, Martin Luther King and thousands of other black residents marched through the cold rain and blazing heat, ignoring and enduring death threats and violence they received”. As a matter of fact, the civil rights movement engaged the law in two basic ways. One was for activists to demand a change to established law. Laws and government policies that discriminated against African Americans defined southern society.

The sit-in movement was different. Black/African American students decided to sit in front of the table at coffee shops and restaurants that had a “whites only” sign upfront. The cops were called and the situation escalated with some students being dragged and beaten from the sits, and with some being arrested. As the sit-in movement spread across the South, many were left wondering Where did this all come from?. The students emphasized the spontaneous elements of the sit-ins. The protests, they insisted over and over again, were nothing more than a necessary, commonsense response to this particular racial injustice. They were tired of the indignities of segregation, and no one seemed to be doing anything that actually changed their lives, so they took it upon themselves to bring change. The sit-in movement was a break from the past. In the 1940s, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a newly formed interracial organization committed to nonviolent protest, led restaurant sit-ins in Chicago and other states.

Some people didn’t understand that what the students were doing was a challenge to existing laws, specifically, the Jim Crow Laws. They wanted to have the use of state authority to protect racial discrimination at lunch counters. It was an opportunity for them to enforce existing law, that is, the constitutional requirements of Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown v. Board of Education strikes down state-mandated segregation in schools. By 1960 most southern states had either removed segregation statutes from the books. Most of the privately-owned lunch counters the students targeted were not compelled to discriminate by law. But they were also required not to discriminate by law. Outside the South, many states and localities had civil rights laws that prohibited racial discrimination in eating establishments and other public accommodations.

With the recent attacks of hate crimes going on against Asians

Violent Protests

The Hong Kong Protest that happened in 2019 took the world by storm because of the violence portrayed by the police against the protesters. The protest was held because Hong Kong citizens were against the bill that allows extradition to mainland China. In other words, they were against the bill that allowed criminals to be deported to China. Hong Kongers feared for their safety because they would be exposed to violence. Fights between police and protesters became violent day by day, It became so out of control that the police had to start firing live bullets into the crowd of protesters and protesters started throwing petrol bombs as a response. The protest began peacefully until the protesters were met with an unreasonable amount of police force with which the government response escalated the situation into an unforgettable disaster. According to BBC News (2019), “An 18-year-old was shot in the chest with a live bullet… One week later, a policeman shot a protester at close range…”. With the violence increasing with each protest, Hong Kong's leader, Carrie Lam suspended the bill indefinitely. However, protests still continued and they demanded an investigation into police actions.

In research from Article 19 (2016), “Law enforcement should have a range of less-lethal equipment at their disposal that allows for the differentiated use of force in full respect of the principles of necessity and proportionality, and ensures that harm and injury are kept to a minimum…”. Also, “ Law enforcement officials must ensure that anyone injured or affected as a result of the use of force receives immediate assistance and medical aid at the earliest possible opportunity, and must report the incident promptly to superiors who must ensure an effective review is carried out by independent administrative or prosecutorial authorities who have the power to exercise authority when appropriate”.

Conclusion-

The job of the police is to protect and diffuse the situation instead of adding to it.