The Place for Protesting in Your Life

The Mall of America was the latest scene of protest.  On Saturday, a few thousand supporters of the “Black Lives Matter” campaign, occupied the mall’s rotunda for a few hours, during one of the busiest shopping days of the year, trying to bring public awareness to the deaths of young African American men at the hands of law enforcement.  Considering they are a private business, I do feel bad for MOA, to a point, but the squelching of the public’s right to protest over the last few years is a main contributor in protesters looking for new, much higher visibility venues.

            I feel as if Mall of America mishandled and misunderstood this protest.  If they would have maintained a more subdued tone, my guess is a much smaller crowd would have shown up, and probably would have dispersed quicker, likely visiting some of the mall stores as they left.  But by initially asking the protesters to not protest, then trying to push them into a parking lot away from the Mall, and then using a threatening tone, they basically dared the protesters to show up in force. Mall officials said afterwards, “…these political activists were more concerned about making a political statement and creating a media event…”  Well of course they were, but the larger point is being missed.  When people try to silence protest, the people protesting have a tendency of getting louder and more visible.

            The First Amendment of the US Constitution preserves the rights of freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble.  The country’s early leaders wanted to make sure people’s voices were heard.  Some of the worst moments in American history have come at the hands of people abusing the public’s right to protest.  The Boston Massacre, the labor riots of the early 20^th Century, Selma, Kent State, and many others are examples of peaceful protests met with horrific violence, but the repression of the right to protest has been usurped lately, not by blunt force, but by city ordinance, hastily made legal loopholes and a desire to make the protesting voices as quiet and as ignorable as possible.

Law enforcement during the Republican Convention of 2008 in St. Paul was all for people protesting, but not on public land near the Xcel Energy Center.  They created protest zones nowhere near the venue, and detoured marching routes away from the main event, creating a new hindrance to protester’s rights, distance.  When the Occupy Movement rose up in this country, city governments, including the leaders of Minneapolis, created hurdle after hurdle for protesters, making sure the protests were discouraged, limited, and non-intrusive, especially for the nearby banks whose actions riled up the masses.  It seems the only type of unrestricted protest allowed today is when individuals strap a loaded assault weapon to their back and visit a large store.

A main reason the Mall of America, Interstate 35W and the main terminal at MSP were targeted was the limiting of the public’s right to be seen and heard when it comes to voicing protest.  Would these protests happen if people were allowed to, or encouraged to, go to highly visible, public land in the Twin Cities, and peacefully protest, as long as they didn’t break any laws?  By trying to silence the public through quickly written laws or herding ‘undesirables’ into pre-approved protest zones, we are only asking for more of this. The protesters are not backing down.

I encourage people, even people I disagree with, to make sure their voices are heard and embrace public protesting, just like the founding fathers wanted.  If protesting becomes something only allowed in a desolate industrial area, behind some dumpsters, in a fenced in barbed wired lot, surrounded by an intimidating police presence, between the hours of 4 and 6, on Tuesdays and every other Sunday, not only are worse off as a society, we are erasing one of the base rights we have as Americans.