this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
82 points (86.6% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35876 readers
3564 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I went to some palestine protests a while back, and was talking to my brother about the organizing, when revealed something I found pretty shocking, we (the protesters) had acquired a permit to hold the protest. Apparently this is standard policy across the US.

More recently, my University is also having protests, and in their policy, they also require explicit approval for what they call "expressive activity". I'm pretty sure not having a permit has been used as an excuse to arrest students in some other campuses.

My question is as the title, doesn't this fundamentally contradict the US's ideals of free speech? What kind of right needs an extra permit to exercise it?

When I was talking to my brother, he also expressed a couple more points:

  1. The city will pretty much grant all permits, so it's more of a polite agreement in most cases
  2. If we can get a permit (which we did) why shouldn't we?

I'm assuming this is because of legal reasons, they pretty much have to grant all permits.

Except I think this makes it all worse. If the government grants almost all permits, then the few rare times it doesn't:

  1. The protest is instantly de-legitimized due to not having a permit
  2. There's little legal precedent for the protesters to challenge this

And then of course there's the usual slippery slope argument. You're giving the government a tool they could expand later to oppress you further. Maybe they start with the groups most people don't like and go up from there.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] NeoNachtwaechter 87 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (6 children)

The city will pretty much grant all permits

Yes, and they have to, because of your free speech.

so it's more of a polite agreement in most cases

No, it is meant for serious. If there are cases where they don't give a permit, they need to have very serious reason.

(For example, if the place where you want to go is very inappropriate, the would tell you to choose a different place)

But there is more: you asking for the permit is important in itself, so the administration can take the needed action for public order, e.g traffic regulation etc. So you have to tell them where you want to do it and how many people you expect to participate.

And when you want to demonstrate about controversial topics, they have to send even more police there for your safety. At least in my country that is legally required. The police helps to protect your right of free speech.

You're giving the government a tool they could expand later to oppress you further

I don't know why you think so. That would be a state without free speech then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

You can inform the city without requiring approval.

they have to send even more police there for your safety.

I don't know which country you live in but I can't recall a single protest in the US where the police have protected the protestors from others

[–] hermitix_world 8 points 6 months ago

They protect white supremacists all the time.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)