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.