Date: 09/20/21

The constitution infringement seen on “The Trial of Chicago Seven”

I. Introduction.
For this essay the main topic is the film "the Chicago 7 trial" from a legal perspective,
taking as a starting point the right to social protest in the North American sphere to
know the different rights that we see broken in the film and the true story, and we will
explain how the government destroyed the constitution, specially right to assembly.
II. Plot.
In the Chicago’s protest flashbacks, we can observe that many anti-Vietnam war
protesters were pacifically on the parks and streets, but they were attacked by Chicago’s
police.
This film takes us directly to a real life event, in which we can see a group of people
where the title tells us that there are 7 but making a careful count we observe that at the
beginning of the trial there are really 8 people, counting the leader of the black panthers
to which from the beginning we observe how all their rights are violated, then we see
the position of the judge who is a bit aggressive with the defended parties, the main
problem of the group is that many of its members at the beginning of the film do not
They manage to understand that they were in a serious judicial process.
The judge always attacked the part of the defense, where we observed that some
interrogations that benefited the parties were dismissed, on the other hand in theory two
jurors were threatened, which are those who were in favor of the accused, below in The
case shows us how the Chicago police carry out an operation infiltrating different agents
in the operation of the leftist groups involved in the case, at this point in the film they
explain to us how the fights began in the park which was a carnage for Chicago Police
Party Against Unarmed Civilians.
In the next part of the film we observe the death of the leader of the Chicago Black
Panthers Fred Hampton, who was the person who helped Bobby Seale in the trial, all
this happened in a strange police raid carried out at 4am where The evidence provided
by Bobby suggests that he was executed, in the trial we observed a clear abuse of
authority against Mr. Bobby where they tied him up and silenced him in a violent way,
such was the case that the court had to annul the case against Bobby , Mr. Ramsey
former prosecutor who decided to support the Chicago 7, at the end of the film everyone
involved is found guilty of inciting a riot, Tom Hayden closes this trial by mentioning
the dead from the Vietnam war.
III. Opinion.
The first amendment of the United States Constitution held “Congress shall make no
law respecting … right of the people peaceably to assemble”. Freedom of peaceful
assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the
individual right or ability of people to come together and collectively express, promote,
pursue, and defend their collective or shared ideas. The right to freedom of association
is recognized as a human right, a political right, and a civil liberty. Freedom of assembly
is often used in the context of the right to protest.
As we saw in the movie, Ramsey Clark, attorney general during the riots, affirmed these
were instigated by Chicago police department. Additionally, the Chicago eight went to
Chicago just to protest Vietnam War, but pacifically, and in the information -we can
read it on internet- compiled about the riots stablished that the protesters weren’t
aggressive and didn’t have riot’s intention. With these facts, we can conclude that
Police had the intention to end with the protests, breaking the first amendment, due of
the protesters had requirements to be there and couldn’t be dispersed, but government
didn’t like the idea that people protest against them, especially its Vietnam war control
way. Police broke the democracy and plurality of opinion, but not only that, this
amendment is the beginning of a series of attacks against protests and Chicago seven,
we can observe due process infringement (fifth amendment) racism (reconstruction
amendments) among others.
As we could see, the citizens protested peacefully, complying with the peaceful manner
required by the constitution, therefore they should be protected by the police, but it was
these who avoided their peaceful protest and initiated violence, leaving dead, wounded
and eight people captured and subjected to a totally unfair political trial.
IV. Conclusion.
In conclusion, the film is a cruel memory about a true story, where people that just
wanted to avoid more American soldiers deceased on a war that didn’t belong to them.
The movie shows the government repression over youth movements because it negates
them the right to say their thoughts about their country and their people, breaking the
constitution and the democracy, basically they destroyed their greatest expression of
American essence.