Will You Sign My Petition?

Last stop on the First Amendment Road Trip.  Hope you’ve enjoyed the trip.  You can tell the road is in some disrepair, big potholes when it comes to free speech, religious freedoms etc.  Today’s travel advisory: be careful about who’s paying and see if anyone is actually listening.

“Congress shall make no laws respecting…the right of people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I circulated my first political petition in 1967.  I was a 16 year old anti-war activist, led teach-ins at my school, a small private girls boarding school in the mountains of Northern New Hampshire. (It was called St. Mary’s in the Mountains.  We called it St. Mags in the Crags.)

But my petition, looking back, was rather selfish.  It wasn’t about the Gulf of Tonkin.  I wanted to change the dress code. The controlling administration had many rules, but my outrage related to skirts and arctic weather. 120 girls isolated in the mountains, we were required to wear skirts all the time, no pants. (Except during sports.  We could wear ski pants in the winter, but I think we wore weird skirts playing field hockey.)

Ever the student rebel, I dared challenge the administration.  First I tried to work through the system, brought my concern nicely to my dorm advisor.  When she said I had no chance, I recalled my American history classes, emulated the early revolutionaries, and circulated a petition among my peers. 

I think both John Adams and I were a little naïve that our many signatures would sway the power crazy king/headmaster.  But we believed in the power of united, assembled voices.

We weren’t greedy. The colonials didn’t start with independence, just a petition for no tax on tea.  My petition was also modest; on those dark winter days when the temperature went below 40 below zero (4.44 Celsius), I nicely asked that we be allowed to wear pants.

The colonials and I got the same result; the tyrants summarily rejected us.  But within two years after I graduated the school was co-ed, had dropped required daily chapel and lost the dress code.  History does not record my small but historic role in that crumbling of autocracy.  But like the Boston Tea Party, I helped change the tide of repression.

The Declaration of Independence centered on the indignity of tyrants ignoring sincere petitions:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

So James Madison made sure to include the right to petition in the Bill of Rights. 

Sadly only 2% of Americans can name it as one of the precious five freedoms in the First Amendment.

Perhaps we don’t appreciate that those lonely or obnoxious signature gatherers in front of supermarkets are essential for us to exercise the First Amendment.  Not only do political candidates need signatures to get their names on ballots, but in many states if you gather enough signatures you can get an initiative on the ballot that can change policies and laws.  By petition, citizens can circumvent legislators and force change themselves.  Here in California we vote on 10 or 15 propositions every November, from taxation to gun control to insurance rates to gay marriage.  The people speak.  Thanks, Madison.

Signature gatherers can be paid, the courts have ruled, and some get up to $5 a signature.  Some argue that means only the rich get their initiatives on the ballot; in California, it costs $1 million just to give people to chance to vote on your good or crazy idea.  The elections people then check each signature to make sure it is valid, the signer really a resident, signed only once etc.  So if you sign, that’s public information.  Tea Party folks and anti gay marriage folks don’t like that; they want to sign anonymously. But courts ruled against them.  That’s the whole point of the First Amendment protection; you can advocate with your signature, government can’t retaliate.  But you can’t advocate in secret.

In the early days of the Obama Administration when they were still hopeful they could change both style and substance of government, they started a website called We the People, where anyone could start a petition, had 30 days to get 5000 signatures and the administration promised a response.  It was so successful that they raised the threshold for response first to 25,000 and now to 100,000. 

But the promise is only to respond; no action is guaranteed. Indeed, in 1984 the Supreme Court ruled:

"Nothing in the First Amendment or in this Court's case law interpreting it suggests that the rights to speak, associate, and petition require government policymakers to listen or respond to communications of members of the public on public issues." 

But that hasn’t stopped Americans from petitioning.  Among all the issues on the We The People site, (human rights, immigrant rights, indict George Zimmerman, gun control, stop animal research, etc.) my favorite is the one enough people signed in 2013 to get an official response;  Star Wars fans demanded the US Government build a Death Star.  They argued it would not just be cool, but would spur job growth and strengthen national defense.  Sadly, the Obama administration advisor of science and space responded

"The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The Construction of a Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000 (850 quadrillion). We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.

• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.

• Why would we spend countless taxpayers dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?"
  

We Americans have opinions on everything.  I sign internet petitions and the clipboards in front of supermarket.  I take part in telephone opinion polls and I’ve whipped up the neighbors against continuing tyranny.  (We stopped a local effort to log the redwoods in our canyon a few years ago; very satisfying.) This right may encourage our selfishness, like mine to change the dress code, but I’m glad those girls aren’t freezing their butts off anymore.

Copyright © 2014 Deborha Streeter