NEW YORK—In light of President Trump’s commandeering of California National Guard units and deployment of U.S. Marines in Los Angeles, and with demonstrations expected to grow around the country, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today issued an urgent call to all government personnel at the local, state, and national levels to recognize and affirmatively protect the right of all to peacefully protest.

The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

“With demonstrations expected to grow around the country, it is essential that all government personnel—civilian and military—understand and fully appreciate their obligation to honor and protect the lawful exercise of constitutional rights. Peaceful protest is a feature of democracy, not a threat to it. The same is true of press freedom. It is beyond disturbing to hear the nation’s most senior officials characterizing the exercise of these constitutional freedoms in terms usually reserved for enemy invasions. It is shocking to see footage of law enforcement officers training their weapons indiscriminately at protesters and deliberately firing them at journalists.

“Plainly, law enforcement must respond when individuals act unlawfully and dangerously. They must do so, however, in a measured way, and with due regard to the safety of all, including journalists and other protesters. Unlawful activity by a small minority must not be used as a pretext for broader repression or lawless conduct by government personnel, civilian or military. And all of us should be wary of a dynamic in which political leaders authorize force with the goal of provoking responses that would justify it.”

In 2024, the Knight Institute produced a short documentary, “Flashpoint: Protests, Policing, and the Press,” which features the stories of several journalists who were assaulted or arrested while reporting at protests that erupted throughout the nation following the murder of George Floyd by members of the Minneapolis police. The film is part of the Los Angeles Times’ Academy Award-winning Short Docs series, and can be viewed here.

See also, the Knight Institute’s report entitled Covering Democracy: Protest, Police, and the Press, by then-Senior Visiting Scholar Joel Simon.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected].