Ep. 88 – Assembly & Petition (1st Amendment, Part 4)

We're wrapping up the First Amendment with a minisode on the last two freedoms it protects – assembly and petition!

Episode Transcript

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Now this is the FCB Podcast Network. They're greed us soldiery and they thought
so when working America. Welcome backto the Growing Patriot podcast American History for

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Kids. I'm your host, AmeliaHamilton. The First Amendment says Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment ofreligion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,
or abridging the freedom of speech orof the press, or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble andto petition the Government for a redress of

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grievances. Well, we've talked aboutreligion, and we've talked about freedom of
the speech and a press, andyou'll probably notice that they all go together,
like peace of a puzzle. Andsince you can pretty much already tell
what that picture is, we're goingto do those last two today. The
rights of the people peaceably to assembleand to petition the Government for a redress

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of grievances. We're going to startwith the right of peaceable assembly. Speaking
alone or writing about something can bea really effective way to share a message,
but sometimes it's more effective to geta whole group of people together.

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They can share their ideas, talkabout problems and how to fix them.
And even tell the government what theythink. So the right to assemble,
as long as you're being peaceful isreally really important. At the same time,
tyrannical governments like we had with theKing, they didn't really want people
to be able to get together.They didn't want those ideas of liberty spreading,

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and that is why our founding fathersknew they had to protect that right.
They had to make sure that thegovernment wouldn't stop people from getting together
and sharing their ideas. And theright to petition, of course, which
is another word for the redress ofgrievances, means that we can tell the
government what we think. We cantell them that we have problems and they
need to solve them. In fact, you write, might remember that the

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colonial governments wrote to the king beforewe even declared independence, saying you need
to fix these problems, and itwas being ignored that made us go to
war. In the Declaration of Independencethey wrote, we have petitioned for redress
in the most humble terms. Ourrepeated petitions have met with repeated injury.
A prince whose character is thus markedby every act which may define a tyrant,

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is unfit to be the ruler ofa free people. So that means
we have tried to ask you nicelyfor help so many times, and you've
ignored us every time, and thatmeans that you are a tyrant, and
a tyrant is not allowed to beour king, so we will declare independence.
The king should have already been familiarwith the right to petition. Anyway,

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These rights go back so far.They go all the way back to
a document called the Magna Carta,which came out in the year twelve fifteen,
and it's one of the first documentsthat really lays out the freedoms that
all people have. So the rightof petition was chapter sixty one in that
Magna Carta, and it said thatpeople could come to the king with their

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problems. Since it was a reallyold English law, the king should have
been more aware of it, buthe messed up and he lost the American
colonies. But we gained all ofthese freedoms in the Bill of Rights.
In order to change things, weneed to be able to get together.
That way, we can advocate forcauses, for beliefs, for the things

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that matter to us. We cantell the government and the people in it
what we think about what they're doing. And what they need to be doing.
And if they don't want to listento our grievances, we can vote
for somebody else. That is anawful lot of power. So when you
take the whole First Amendment together,we are allowed to express ourselves, to
get together, and to make changesin ways that aren't allowed in a lot

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of other countries in the world.We take a lot of these things for
granted, but it's important to rememberthat our founding fathers knew that these things
could be threatened. They had livedthrough it, so they put it all
down in the very first Amendment tothe Bill of Rights to make sure that
everyone knew, that the people knewand the government knew that these rights could

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not be infringed. Thanks for listeningto this quick episode wrapping up the First
Amendment. Remember you can find thebooks and every episode at Growing Patriots dot
com or we're at Growing Patriots onFacebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks

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and we'll see you next time.They're pretty us solved, and they thought
so would be America. This hasbeen a presentation of the FCB podcast Network,

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where real talk lifts. Visit usonline at FCB Podcasts dot com.