Protesting and Permits

Answer: It’s totally up to the police when you protest without a permit. In some cities like New York, the police will quickly pepper spray and start attacking protesters as soon as you step off of the sidewalk or park. Other cities you’ll be able to march around with very little police presence at all. It partially depends on how much traffic you’re blocking. In the US you’re allowed to have protests in parks and on sidewalks without a permit. Provided you don’t block the sidewalk from people passing and keep moving. I really should write up a FAQ on how to hold a protest. You should ask other people in your community how the police have reacted in the past in your town. Some groups of protesters always try and get permits, others refuse to get permits. Anarchists tend to think that the right to assembly should not be infringed by having to ask the government for permission, so they on principle don’t get a permit. Other groups that that the government has a right to regulate who can gather where and in what numbers, so they get permits. Most people take the pragmatic approach. If you want to setup a stage with speakers and music then you better get a permit. Not having one means you have something for the police to seize if they want to stop the protest. There are some groups such as Reclaim the Streets in which the protesters take along speakers and music systems. They have roving parties in the city center. Often they have the sound systems hidden under giant puppets or at the center of a crowd of dancing protesters. This keeps the police from shutting things down. Critical Mass is a biking protest where the activists ride together in large numbers there is a very clear position to not get permits. There is also a clear statement that nobody leads the protest. It is an organized coincidence which happens the last Friday of the month in cities all over the world. For this reason, and because people on bicycles have the right to ride in the street, these protests have been very successful without permits. Sometimes the police escort the protests even though they are permit-less, other times they attack them and arrest some people. Outside the US the situation depends on the country. In Argentina for example, there have been over 13,000 protests in 2002. The vast majority of these were without any permission. The protesters routinely block all the highways in to the capital city, around key oil refineries, or occupy factories and governmental buildings. While there have been a few protesters killed, the massive numbers of protests and participants has acted as a kind of shield against sustained repression.

Under the right wing pro-paramilitary government in Colombia protesters still take to the street in large numbers. But they are very aware of the police and when they see the riot cops approaching they turn and run. The police are quick to use their batons, teargas and even guns to disperse the crowd. Although these tactics of repression are more limited to the third world it is not exclusive by any means. During the Quebec City FTAA protests in April 2001 the police fired off about 4700 canisters of tear gas and untold numbers of rubber bullets to disperse three days of massive un-permitted protests.

Often at large anti-globalization protests some of the groups will apply for permits while others will refuse them. This creates a situation where some parts of a city there are legally protected protests and others where protests will be brutally attacked by the police. The US courts recently ruled that the practice of creating ‘free speech zones’ where people are free to protest, often at a distance from and out of sight of the object of their protest, is an illegal restriction of the 1st amendment. Despite this ruling, the existence of permits are to provide a legitimized outlet for protest while controlling any dissent and limiting it’s voice.

Some city governments have used permits to exert tremendous control over protests. They use the permits to change the routes, and often to throw off the organizers by delaying the approval of the permit until right before the event is going to take place. The City of New York has the worse reputation for these kinds of unconstitutional and repressive tactics when it comes to protest permits.