Just How Much Can the State Restrict a Peaceful Protest?

by Braden Goyette
ProPublica, Oct. 17, 2011, 12:42 p.m.

As protests supporting Occupy Wall Street have swelled in recent weeks, hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested across the U.S. This weekend, nearly 100 people were arrested in New York and 175 in Chicago. More than 100 protesters were arrested in Boston last week; a few weeks ago, 700 were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge.

So, if the First Amendment guarantees the right to peaceable assembly, why do peaceful protestors keep getting arrested — and sometimes pepper-sprayed and beaten up?