Why I am Participating
The rights of photographers are slowly being eroded, bit by bit. To use an old simile, it’s like flies eating a racehorse. Sure, the flies only take a nibble here and there but if the horse didn’t have that giant tail to shoo them off with, they could very well eat him up.
It’s the same thing with our rights. Little by little, we are being more and more restricted in how we can express ourselves and what we can record with our cameras. Some people are saying this particular issue isn’t a big one and are questioning whether we want to fight this battle.
Wars are won and lost on the battlefield. If we do nothing to support rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution and the Supreme Court, we may as well not have those rights. The freedoms we have are not granted to us by the government; they simply have not yet been taken away. They are the DMZ and up for grab if we don’t stand up to fight for them.
July 4th is the perfect day to come out in a show of unity and stand together to celebrate the right to photograph in public. If we don’t do this now, we will be fighting something else more drastic later on.