The standard small-town Facebook drama ensued this morning and on a message thread about the local protesters for Occupy Wallstreet, someone posted that they should “End it…the right to assemble does not mean denying the rights of others by blocking bank entrances, over-running parks and just a lot of nonsense…”

Many in Birmingham, AL and other hotbeds of racial inequality protest during the 1960s also felt that the blacks who staged sit-downs at lunch counters and boycotted bus companies were engaged in ‘nonsense’. I’m not an OWS’er, but I know that our Constitution does not offer a “unless it’s inconvenient for others” exception to any of the rights outlined.

I don’t align myself with these protesters, but if I don’t support their right to exercise these rights, then what moral authority will I have in the future when MY rights are endangered?

 
First they came for the OWS protesters
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a hippy.

Then they came for the Tea Party protester
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a crazy person.

Then they came for the smokers-rights protesters
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a smelly cigarette smoker.

Then they came for me
and there was nobody left to speak out.
(apologies to pastor Martin Niemöller for my bowlderization)