The bedrock of freedom

(This essay by Mitchell Ellmauer, a junior at Sullivan West High School, won a $10,000 award in the New York Press Association First Amendment Essay contest.)

Amendment 1: “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 2005, about 250,000 people marched on Washington, DC to protest the Iraq War. Without the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, the government might have violently suppressed the protesters. The First Amendment ensures our freedom to protest (here the people’s right of free speech, the right of assembly and the right to petition the government are combined) government actions and injustices; it has been frequently exercised to expand democracy and promote social justice. The 19th Amendment exists because women’s suffrage activists organized marches and speeches and leafleted and petitioned for universal suffrage. The eight-hour workday, minimum wage, collective bargaining, and other workers’ rights are the products of decades of protest by the Labor Movement. The Civil Rights movement successfully campaigned for an end to racial segregation and government sanctioned racial discrimination.

Of course, there are many instances in which the government does not protect the public’s First Amendment rights, and protest is wrongly suppressed. Consider the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 (which made it illegal to speak out against the government or the military), or anti-segregation marches in Alabama, which were met with fire hoses and police dogs. More recently, the Bush administration regularly uses “free speech zones,” which require protesters to remain in a designated area, to conceal protest from the media and, thus, from the public.

But, with exceptions, the rule of law prevails. The Espionage and Sedition Acts were ruled unconstitutional in 1969 by the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio. The case established that “mere abstract teaching of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence” cannot be prohibited. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was beaten and jailed for campaigning against Jim Crow laws; today, he is considered a national hero for helping end the South’s apartheid system of racial segregation. The same government that spied on him and attempted to blackmail him honors Dr. King with a national holiday.

Thus, the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and petition, in essence our inalienable right to publicly express our opinions, are essential to the functioning of any democracy (the freedom of religion, while important, is irrelevant to the right of protest). Actions taken which infringe on First Amendment freedoms and other civil rights have almost always been met with widespread public outrage. The Kent State massacre sparked massive protests across the country; people eventually tired of the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s and Joseph McCarthy was censured; images of police violence against civil rights activists turned public opinion in favor of the Civil Rights movement. Because a democratic government serves the people, ultimately it must concede to the demands of the masses. Thus, in Nazi Germany the freedoms of speech and assembly were the first to be suspended. The freedoms protected by the First Amendment are the most sacred of all our civil liberties; for they give a voice to the electorate between elections and serve to truly empower the people.