New song: "The Constitution Is My Permit"

This Week with David Rovics

Those who read my recent lengthy missive have some idea of my impressions of the protests surrounding the DNC in Chicago last week, as they were executed. (Here’s that missive in Counterpunch.)

As I mentioned in that piece, protest organizers and people trying to help them have faced endless problems coming from the city authorities in the process of trying to get permits to have a rally and a march. Permits were only granted days before things were set to take place, an obviously preposterous situation for trying to organize anything, which the city authorities imposed on the rest of us, as they blatantly violated all of our First Amendment rights.

I wrote this song in Chicago, and this recording is from our visit to WZRD community radio last Thursday. It’s a song I could have written decades ago, it’s worth noting. There have been so many occasions before this Chicago DNC when authorities have blatantly violated the rights of the people to exercise their First Amendment rights. Two examples that come to mind are that very freezing day in February, 2003, when the mayor declared we could have a rally, but no march. And 2004 during the RNC in New York City, when the city fathers then randomly decided the antiwar movement this time could have a march, but no rally.

The Bill of Rights in the USA has always been more of a good idea than an actual reality. But it remains a really good idea.