Peaceably to Assemble

By Colleen Gundlach

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The rights addressed in the first amendment to the United States Constitution are a vital building block of the country’s representative democracy. A group of people from Norfolk exercised these rights when they came out in force on June 8 to protest the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis in May. Organized on the Village Green by Pastor Erick Olsen, the group assemble to support the Black Lives Matter movement in protesting the excessive police force that resulted in Floyd’s death. These Norfolk area residents who took part stood up for their beliefs.

What differentiated the Norfolk gathering from many others throughout the country was the peaceful and supportive nature of the gathering. The word “peaceful” is key here, as is the word “peaceably” in the First Amendment. The people on Village Green that day were showing their support for a cause they believed to be right and, in a peaceable manner, were exercising their right to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 

The line between peaceable and intolerable has been crossed in many of our cities. Protesters in places such as Minneapolis ─where business owner Kris Wurobeck watched as protesters burned his business, 7-Sigma, to the ground; and in Seattle, where protesters have set up an “autonomous zone,”─have turned neighborhoods into war zones. David Dorn, a retired police captain in Saint Louis, was shot while he was attempting to protect a jewelry store from looting. His assailants caught the attack on a Facebook Live video. The list goes on and on. This is not peaceable assembly. This is civil disobedience and anarchy and it is frightening

Fortunately, here in Norfolk we are a community that stands up for our beliefs in a peaceful manner. We disagree, often loudly and vocally, but usually respectfully and with a spirit of compromise. We are fortunate to live in such a town and to be able to express our opinions, pro and con, and join the hundreds of thousands of people in towns and cities across the country, in expressing these opinions through peaceable assembly. 

When Abraham Lincoln first proposed the greatest presidential executive order of his generation, his advisers were against it, calling it too radical. When the Emancipation Proclamation was finally signed on January 1, 1863, it declared that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” This executive order paved the way for the eventual abolition of slavery throughout the country and, two years later, for the ratification of the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits “slavery and involuntary servitude.” 

Back in the 1860s, slavery was condemned because of strong people–black and white–who believed in human rights. Today, in 2020, change will again be made by strong people of all races who speak out against injustice. But nothing good will come of organized violence and destruction. Here in Norfolk, that small group of people on Village Green was part of the solution. Change will be made through one-on-one dialogue and peaceful demonstrations─people working to effect change.

As Lincoln himself said, “Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.”