to rest, pray, or conduct interviews or take pictures, makes it difficult and dangerous for older people and/or those with disabilities to exercise their right to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances--or for journalists to exercise their constitutionally protected function.
I am 64, overweight, and not in great health. I use a cane and have high blood pressure and heart problems. If I lived nearby, I would absolutely want to join the protests, but I cannot stand or walk for long periods. I would need to have a portable seat of some sort and to take breaks from standing and walking--but doing that has gotten protesters arrested in Ferguson, as has participating in brief group prayer circles. Journalists and protesters have also been arrested when they pause for a picture or a short interview.
For someone like me--or like this brave, decent man--being forced to continue marching for hours, with no opportunity to rest, especially in the horrendous, humid heat of a Missouri summer, is brutal and potentially lethal. I kept thinking of the death marches forced on prisoners by both the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII!
Oh, sure, that man could always just go home, and if I were there, so could I. But to make it virtually impossible to engage in peaceful protest except for very limited time (and in a manner so convenient for the repressive authirities one wishes to protest against!) is to defang protest altogether and to essentially deny many people any right at all to participate.
The ACLU has briefly mentioned this aspect of the violation of protesters' (and journalists') rights, but the emphasis has been mostly on the assault on press freedom, not on the fact that this "keep moving" rule is so obviously and brutally unconstitutional.
Even worse, some idiot of a federal judge refused to strike down that disgusting rule. At least the ACLU did say in its press release that this rule denied the First Amendment rights of older people, sick people, and people with disabilities. I hope there is a big lawsuit that focuses specifically on this aspect of the authoritarian suppression of the protesters' and journalists' rights, so that it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.
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