As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday this year, you can bet you’ll hear more about the fateful day in 1773 when a group of liberty-loving Charlestonians staged America’s first tea party, gathering at the Exchange Building on East Bay Street to protest Britain’s Tea Act.
What you’re less likely to hear? That the very same protest today would likely get you tossed in the clink under the city’s performatively tough — and amusingly Orwellian — “First Amendment” ordinance.
That’s the one that says any protest involving 25 or more people requires a Charleston city government permission slip. It essentially gives the Charleston Police Department effective control over the time, place and manner of free speech and free assembly throughout the city of Charleston. And that’s wrong and un-American.
The reasoning? Apparently, uh, public safety. Or law and order. Or whatever other euphemism is being used these days by the mouth-clampers to justify telling our fellow citizens to sit down, shut up and get a respectable haircut for once, whydoncha?
Of course, defenders of the ordinance will say its so-called 48-hour rule — a clause that waives permit requirements for protests happening within two days of a breaking news event — meets the city’s obligation to the First Amendment.
Moreover, they’ll point to the night of May 30, 2020, when a “criminal mob” looted, set fires and vandalized shops on upper King Street following a tense but largely peaceful George Floyd protest march.
Hogwash and double hogwash.
Let’s take those almost reasonable-sounding arguments in order, starting with the wildly impractical 48-hour rule.
To take a recent example: We learned that President Donald Trump used military force to snatch the president of Venezuela at around 4 a.m. on Jan. 3. Sometime after 11 a.m. that day, we learned that he plans to “run” the country from Washington. Later still, and into the next day, the president made clear his interest in taking similar actions in Cuba, Colombia and Greenland.
When does the 48-hour clock on that event start exactly? Can the police arrest anyone protesting at 4:01 a.m. Monday? Or do they have to figure out whether individual protesters are demonstrating against the snatch, the power-grab or the threats to other countries before they slap on the cuffs? If that whole exercise sounds silly, it’s only because it is.
As for the May 30 “riot,” let’s be frank: The people who went to prison for their lawless actions that night weren’t the 2,000 or so political protesters who marched in the afternoon against police brutality. They were a very small group of repeat criminal offenders who hit King Street after dark.
What’s more, City Council passed its protest ordinance not in immediate response to that event, but more than a year later — after 14 months of peaceful protests following the May 30 mess.
All of this is not public safety. It’s CYA for politicians. And now more than four years later, it’s time to undo the damage with a citizen lawsuit challenging the ordinance or a simple vote of Charleston City Council to fix it.
Either would be the 250th birthday present that Charleston deserves.
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