20 of the most famous protests in U.S. history

  Two First Amendment freedoms are the least known: freedom of assembly and freedom to petition. Freedom of assembly protects the right to gather peacefully. Freedom to petition protects the right to tell government officials without fear of punishment if you think a policy is good or want something to change.

  When people have a protest, march, or rally, they use freedom of assembly. They may also use the freedom to petition.

New wave of anti-protest laws may infringe on religious freedoms for Indigenous people

  Over four days in June 2021, thousands of protesters attended the Treaty People Gathering in opposition to Line 3, a crude oil pipeline slated to be built across traditional homelands of the Ojibwe peoples in northern Minnesota.

  To begin the gathering, Indigenous elders led a public religious ceremony. They said prayers and sang songs that blessed and sanctified the headwaters of the Mississippi River. They also prayed for the people involved in the protest – over 100 of whom were later arrested for trespassing and other acts of civil disobedience.

Is fear making us better news consumers?

  The majority of Americans consider fake news and misinformation to be serious threats to democracy — and that fear may actually be making us better and savvier news consumers.

  Last month, the First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum Institute released the results of the 2019 State of the First Amendment survey. We’ve been conducting this survey since 1997, taking stock of what Americans know and how they feel about their expressive freedoms — and each year we brace ourselves for bad news.

Losing our core freedoms by not knowing we have them

  Ignorance may well have been bliss to 18th-century English poet Thomas Gray, but in 2019, widespread ignorance of our core freedoms and how our government functions is just plain dangerous.

  A just-released Survey of Civic Literacy, conducted by the American Bar Association (ABA) and released May 1 to mark national Law Day, finds many of us do not know much about either subject.

Does it really matter that Americans don’t know exactly what the First Amendment says?

  The majority of Americans are supportive of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment but are also unaware of exactly what those rights are, according to the recently released 2018 State of the First Amendment survey by the First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum Institute.

  When asked if the First Amendment goes too far in the rights that it protects, more than three-fourths of Americans disagree. That’s fairly good news, but it’s somewhat tempered by the fact that a third of Americans cannot name a single freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. Another third can only name one. Only one survey respondent out of a sample of 1,009 could name all five. And 9 percent of Americans think that the First Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. (For the record, that’s the Second Amendment.)

Two states are pushing laws to criminalize some protests

  Rightly or wrongly, certain First Amendment issues tend to dominate the national conversation more than others. Bring up President Trump’s tweets criticizing the news media, college campus protests of controversial speakers, or the possibility of the government regulating Facebook and you’re bound to inspire a rousing and possibly heated discussion. Mention that state laws protecting critical infrastructure might actually erode the right to assemble and you’re more likely to get blank stares and a hasty topic change. After all, it’s an issue that combines the freedom of assembly, which barely anyone knows about, with state and local law, which barely anyone cares about. Throw in the word “infrastructure” and it’s practically anti-clickbait.