Unite the Right Rally – A Misuse of the First Amendment?

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference. It prohibits any laws that establish a national religion, impede the free exercise of religion, abridge the freedom of speech, infringe upon the freedom of the press, interfere with the right to peaceably assemble, or prohibit citizens from petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.

On Saturday August 12^th, 2017 at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, VA the First Amendment was put to test at the Unite the Right rally. The rally was organized in response to the city’s decision to remove Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s statue as a means of protest. It was scheduled to begin at 5pm but protestors began arriving as early as 8am and failed to comply with instructions on how and from where to enter the premises, which ultimately led to them being in dangerously close proximity to counter protestors.

The rally was intended to be a peaceful protest against the erasure of history that some sects were unhappy with, largely white males. But it soon turned violent when a group of white “nationalists” charged towards counter protestors, swinging sticks, punching, and spraying chemicals. Racist slurs could be heard targeted towards African-American counter protestors wearing “Black Lives Matter” shirts. To top it all off, in the afternoon, a rally-goer identified as James Alex Fields Jr. drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter protestors.

It can be argued that the protestors were simply exercising their First Amendment rights; however, the verbiage and the unnecessary excessive force used would classify it more as a hate crime, in my view at least. The First Amendment allows people to peacefully assemble and protest but this was the furthest thing from it and yet it was allowed to continue for as long as it did despite such violent displays. That then begs the question, how far are we willing to go to let people exercise their so-called constitutional rights? What if the exercising of such rights were to cause mental, emotional, and/or physical harm to others? I would imagine that in such extreme cases, constitutional rights would not count for much. Liberty, equality, and protection of people would receive precedence.

The fact that a rally that was meant to be peaceful turned as violent as it did and there were casualties involved purely because they differed in their ideologies indicates to me that the First Amendment was misused on the day and that the protest should not only have been disbanded but the protestors should have been held in contempt of the First Amendment and tried in court under due process.

To avoid facing such terrible situations and be better prepared in the future, I would suggest having local police forces inspect and search protestors and counter protestors before such a rally in order to discourage the use of weapons. Officers should also be on the lookout for hate speech and violence provoking language that can be quelled before it gets as out-of-hand as it did in Charlottesville, VA.