Kmhappel
Freedom of Assembly in the United States Discussion edit
In my lifetime, the freedom to assemble and petition our government for a redress of grievances has created the largest political changes in the United States. From the civil rights movement, to the anti-Vietnam war movement, to the tea party movement, Americans have managed to alter the national course of events by exercising this political right and making the government take notice when it would rather not. Freedom of speech or freedom of individual expression and the freedom to peacably assemble and put political clout [redress of grievances] to that free speech are equally important. I discovered that the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances is missing from the entire dialog in the Wikipedia and from the United Nations conventions. Legal arguements that I have heard of various conventions being equivalent leave out that the founders included this right becaus they were concerned with the natural concentration of power and its tendancy to tyranny. They saw this right as a tool of common people to speak to their political institutions and demand redress of grievances. This is quite different from both the right to assemble and the right to associate politically.
I intend to create a page with the above name and welcome comments and contributions. Please do not erase things you suggest be changed. Please place comments within the text in brackets [brackets] so I can see the context within the text of you comment. If it is general or not yet reflected please add it at the end. When I do the final edit, the order and flow will be unified. kmh (talk) 17:15, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
DISCUSSION
The founders of the United States contemplated a revolutionary war because they had no effective means of peacably redressing their grievances with the Crown. There are many international agreements about the right to assemble and the right to association including political. However, the founders were actually talking about something different. The were talking about the right to a initiate a redress of grievances by mass assembly of citizens associated or not. The point being that political association is of little use under tyranny. Majority rule was deemed tyrannical to the rights of minorities and is the reason that the founders did not create a democracy.