Strange to use the word "most" without much effort to compare to other rights.
And it also doesn't really define "underappreciated" very well.
America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
51–60 of 69 posts
Re: America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replace Reddit, Twitter, and Discord or any of the zillion other social networks that exist, the existence of which undermines your concerns from the start, and put in something more traditional like a mall, a private cemetery, or the local coffee shop. You can assemble as much as you like in any of these places during business hours. There might be some quality to them, the availability of open space, good seating,…
An essential part of the "town square" is that it is that it is a central place where people can be heard. The fact that zillions of social networks exist is irrelevant since only a few of them have the public scope and size such that they act as a modern town square. The same is true of physical spaces. The right to peaceable assembly doesn't the same as it has in the past because in the past the center of society w…
To be frank I think the relevancy of those few social networks that are considered “public squares” is massively overblown. They can register on a political radar, but only on a very crowded radar screen.
Tumblr isn’t dead yet, and is still a favored hangout for the fringe parts of society. Twitter isn’t dead, and it is the favored hangout of journalists and celebrities and their hangerons. Facebook and Reddit are appealing to vast cross sections of society but serve different functional purposes, so different parts of society surface more easily than others depending on the platform. Every Slack channel, Discord, IRC channel, group chat in iMessages or WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger, whatever the Google Talk of the week is, and mailing list is in essence, a different public square, and we haven’t even factored in newer federated social network stacks.
Society happens in many different spaces. It happens in the courthouse, in the cafés and tea houses, on the subway platform and the train that picks you up, in the back of a hired car, at your local City Hall and in the halls of Congress, inside the very Oval Office, and all the public parks.
The misconception that you, and many many others are under is that there even is a town square as a central organizing principle that serves as one place that society gathers. There isn’t, outside of the New England townships and their imitations anyway, just a million different islands, some of them bigger and/or more trafficked than others, some of which a little flashier than others, and with larger coastal defenses than others. Social networks are merely a part of society, they aren’t the means by which society organizes itself.
Re: America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
#53Something I wish was addressed is what the right to peaceable assembly even looks like in the age of technology. I guess the same could be said about free speech, but I feel the greatest threat to these rights isn't from the government, but from tech monopolies whose platforms have become defacto "town halls" or "town squares". If Reddit, Twitter, Discord etc, are how people assemble and communicate in the 21st centu…
People can communicate by typing in yourprotestwebsite.com and interacting there. Having the right to assemble doesn't mean the government has to make it easy for you: and not to mention, having the internet at your disposal makes organizing a protest infinitely easier than at the time of the nation's founding.
Whether the government has to do something vs should do something seems similar to the question of whether Western democracies are truly democratic, or theatric.
Re: America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replace Reddit, Twitter, and Discord or any of the zillion other social networks that exist, the existence of which undermines your concerns from the start, and put in something more traditional like a mall, a private cemetery, or the local coffee shop. You can assemble as much as you like in any of these places during business hours. There might be some quality to them, the availability of open space, good seating,…
I like that there is a logic and consistency to this "hyper-capitalist" approach, but the founders could not have had internet platforms in mind when they wrote the rules. Back when the country was 10,000x smaller, then yes, meeting in person at the equivalent of a mall would empower a group enough to keep the authorities worried. But now? Could anything like the umbrella movement in Hong Kong happen without the orga…
There is a lot that the founders didn’t account for from the cotton gin forward, but they inherited one of the most flexible legal systems in the world and even made some improvements upon it.
The nice thing about the common law is that it adapts over time. The nice thing about a republic is that your legal system no longer depends on a King and in the absence of even a President, society will still tick forward with the rules of the road well understood, and human ingenuity can still flourish in these conditions.
And the nice thing about capitalism, really just free markets, is that as a byproduct of human ingenuity, you tend to see an increase in the number of choices available to you over time, and the quality of those choices will tend to increase over time even as the price decreases over time.
You can choose where to socialize. You can choose who to socialize with. You can choose what to socialize around.
If we ever get to the point where we would want something like the umbrella movement to happen here, then we have far bigger problems than whether that could or could not happen without the assistance of certain social networks. Also if I recall correctly, the HK protest movement actually made use of obscure social media tools as mainstream tools became unavailable or inconvenient and built tools of their own to carry out the movement, or repurposed existing tools which never had the purpose of supporting the movement. You know, good old fashioned human ingenuity.
Re: America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
#55Worth mentioning this right is often shut down by bullshit police. In Berkeley they shut down protests over police brutality after Eric Gardner died by shooting tear gas into the crowds and beating whomever they could.
I’ll admit the next day they were more tame (thanks to all the videos catching their abuse) but I’ll never forget seeing four officers beat up some female student twenty feet away. Disgusting.
Re: America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thinking out loud here, but I don’t think this is as real a risk as it may first appear to be. In most cases I think the owners of the road would rightfully make sure their property is used per their rules. But if we had a society-wise protest (like in Hong Kong), the general laws/rules would be ignored anyways and not much changes between the public and private scenarios. The problem with today’s protests in America…
My understanding is that in most if not all social movements only a small, radical minority actually protests. However, I don't think that invalidates the protests or makes them any less important. Maybe that's just how it works: The role of the most radical sect of a movement is to create the momentum that allows the more moderate expressions of the movement to be implemented.
Also, the less socially acceptably public protests are, the more you will see only radicals do it. I still remember the media contempt of the Occupy Wall Street people. They were peaceful, based on a real concern and were widely portrayed as a bunch of idiots.
Re: America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
#57Digital surveillance has created somewhat of a dilemma for those that just want their voice heard and has perverted public assembly along the way.
As mentioned, when the topic of assembly is Okay, its fine and dandy, but if its only OK (ex. Pot rally) or deemed non-PC, the facial ID exploits, IMEI catchers and LPR's ensure a detailed record of attendees (more than in generations past) which is more than the "I got the t-shirt" souvenir most expect.
Data brokers (public, private,government) have weaponized the first amendment in many ways and it has been acknowledged in Hong Kong by the obfuscation needed for peaceful assembly.
Its better to offer surrogates and dark money in a system like that, which goes against the principles of democracy, but it is what it is.
Its the same way outside of America too:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/this-student-attende...
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/german-student-jakob-l...
Re: America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "Town square" has never given you a global audience. Reddit, twitter, and discord are not the equivalent of a Town square, they're a global square giving normal people access to an audience they never would have previously had access to. I get that you have opinions about this, but pretending that the right to have your tweets promoted to an audience of millions and the right to free assembly are in any way the s…
Well the first amendment also includes freedom of the press, which inherently involves the amplification of speech to reach the masses. So I think the Internet is easily covered.
No, it prevents the government from censoring the press. It does not require that any given press publish you. In other words, if you're going to consider that "Facebook" is like "The Washington Post", you have no right to be published in either.
And the government forcing either to publish you is an attack on the freedom of speech of the publisher. Because forcing them to say something they don't want to is a clear and obvious violation of their freedom of speech.
Re: America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
#59Re: America's Most Underappreciated Right: Public Assembly
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the first amendment also includes freedom of the press, which inherently involves the amplification of speech to reach the masses. So I think the Internet is easily covered.
No, it prevents the government from censoring the press. It does not require that any given press publish you. In other words, if you're going to consider that "Facebook" is like "The Washington Post", you have no right to be published in either. And the government forcing either to publish you is an attack on the freedom of speech of the publisher. Because forcing them to say something they don't want to is a clear…
Right but my point was just that the Internet clearly falls under the 1st amendment expression and is therefore protected from government influence in similar ways.