Say Anything Blog

Here’s an interesting question.  The people down in the Cape Coral, FL area want to hold a tea party.  But the city is telling them they can’t.

CAPE CORAL, Fla. - A tea party to protest government spending and taxing is canceled. Canceled by the government.

Why? They feel too many people could show-up.

Lynn Rosko planned to hold a tax payer tea party at Jaycee Park in Cape Coral on April 1st. The idea was announced at a Cape Coral City Council meeting, then an e-mail blast by the Republican Party and it was mentioned in the local media.

With all of that attention, the City of Cape Coral felt there could be more than 500 people attending the tea party.

The reason the city is saying “no” is because all events with estimated attendance over 500 people is required to pay for insurance:

Therefore Rosko needed to get a permit and insurance for the event. Rosko says she’s not willing to get insurance and accept liability for something that a stranger could do. Rosko told WINK News, “I have rescinded any organizing or supervision or what ever you want to call it over this tea party on April 1st.”

WINK News spoke to the director of parks for Cape Coral. He says that even now if Rosko is willing to get insurance for the event he’ll likely re-authorize it.

I’m a bit torn on this.  On one hand, insurance seems reasonable.  On the other hand, at what point does the government need to back off on the regulations and just recognize that we have a constitutional right to peacefully assemble?  The insurance requirement is meant to protect organizers and the city from the expense of gatherings gone awry.  But is such a requirement just?

One thing that worries me is the way in which the government is prone to not outright prohibiting the exercise of our rights, but rather making it so complicated to exercise our rights that we just choose not to anyway.  They do it with the endlessly inane and complex requirements one must fulfill before purchasing a firearm, or getting a concealed carry license.  They do it with regulations on political speech for political advocacy groups (see: campaign finance reform).  Now they appear to be doing it with assembly and protest.

Again, I guess I don’t necessarily think an insurance policy is all that unreasonable.  But also, given the likely expense of such a policy, that it’s probably prohibitive to the sort of grassroots, private-citizen rallies these tea parties have been to date.  Big, national advocacy groups could probably foot the bill ok.  But do we really want those sort of groups to be the only ones who can afford to organize a protest?

I wonder, did our revolutionary forebears have to get permission from the government before they protested?