It has been reported that more than five million people attended the recent 'No Kings' protests around the country. — Yong Kim/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS
ONE of the most fundamental rights in a free and open democracy is the right to peaceably assemble and protest. In the 1960s, protesters took to American streets demanding social change, political change and an end to war, and it seems as though we’ve entered a new age of unrest over the past few months with mass protests against the Trump administration, like the nationwide “No Kings” demonstrations held June 14.
In 1963, American legal scholar and Yale professor Thomas Emerson wrote that this type of free expression “operates, in short, as a catharsis throughout the body politic.” In other words, protesting allows us to purge ourselves of emotions, like anger and frustration, that might otherwise remain pent up, perhaps to the detriment of a cohesive society.
