Police In North Carolina Arrest Peaceful Protestors, Declare Protesting A ‘Non-Essential Activity’

A group of peaceful protesters gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina on Tuesday to call for the re-opening of the state. They stood outside and observed social distancing guidelines. More importantly, they observed the guidelines of the First Amendment, which, plain as day, protects “the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” They were assembled. They were peaceful. And they were petitioning their government for a specific and reasonable thing, namely the right to go back to work and feed their families.

But the protestors forgot that our Founding Fathers, when codifying our inherent human rights into the legal document known as the Bill of Rights, included the important caveat that all rights immediately evaporate whenever there’s a virus and people are scared. You can’t see it because it’s written in invisible ink. That appears to be the legal theory of the governor of North Carolina and his law enforcement agents, anyway, as Raleigh police descended upon the peaceful assembly and instructed it to disperse. At least one of the protestors was arrested.

When asked to justify their actions, the Raleigh Police Department explained on Twitter that — and this is a direct quote — “protesting is a non-essential activity.” I expect that the bootlickers who support the government’s right to arrest people for going to church will find this reasoning totally acceptable. But Americans who value freedom will recognize it as Orwellian insanity. If a politician can unilaterally abolish our fundamental liberties simply by declaring them non-essential, then we have no fundamental liberties.

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