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Original article can be found at ��
Originally published on June 17, 2016 By Patty Limerick��

Let’s say that you have gone to hear Gov. John Hickenlooper talk about his recently published autobiography, “The Opposite of Woe.”��

And then woe suddenly becomes your own destiny, and all you can hear are angry people shouting about their opposition to hydraulic fracturing.��

You forgot to bring your copy of the Bill of Rights, so you cannot get your bearings by reviewing the relevant parts of the First Amendment: Congress can make no laws “abridging the freedom of speech” or interfering with “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”��

And yet, as it happens, no members of Congress are on hand. Instead, you are stuck with the question: “What am I to do about the debacle in American civic order taking place around me?”��

Welcome to my world at 7:32 p.m. on the evening of June 8.��

Expecting a crowd, the Boulder Bookstore had arranged to hold the governor’s presentation in the sanctuary of the First Congregational Church.��

Bookstore employees, we soon learned, are accustomed to dealing with audiences of considerate book-lovers who adopt respectful silence at the sight of the speaker.��

The topic of hydraulic fracturing has a way of rattling such expectations.��

In less than a minute, when it was clear that the evening’s official hosts were immobilized, I appointed myself as moderator. While I have presided over many controversial programs at the Center of the American West, this was not the Center’s event; I held no role beyond “member of the audience.”��

Stepping forward as a volunteer moderator was an eccentric choice: the people shouting had no interest in being moderated. Moreover, the people who were not shouting were becoming increasingly immoderate in their desire to have the other people stop shouting.��

Exercising my tiny shred of authority (earned by my clever move of grabbing the microphone before the protesters thought to do so), I rearranged the sequence of the evening, sending the governor off to the book-signing table and declaring that I would figure out a plan to permit him to give his talk.��

Then I tried various experiments.��

Would the protesters agree to a plan by which the governor would speak, and the evening would conclude with the protesters explaining their opposition to his stance on hydraulic fracturing?��

The answer: “NO.”��

A woman in the audience suggested that people should stand up, turn toward one particularly audible protester, and ask him to keep quiet or to leave. Nearly everyone stood and made this request.��

“NO.”��

Taking inspiration from our setting, I asked the group to sing “Amazing Grace.” Blessedly, no one shouted “NO,” but grace could not save us from our stalemate.��

And then, after an hour of futile effort, the host institution finally agreed to call the police, the protesters decamped, and the governor spoke.��

I believe that people opposed to hydraulic fracturing have the right to be heard and “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” though I hold an unshakable preference for “peaceably assembling” as an alternative to “rudely, vexingly and ear-shatteringly assembling.”��

And I believe that the exercise of that right of expression is compatible — in fact, must be compatible — with the right of citizens to hear their state’s elected leader.��

Patty Limerick is Colorado’s state historian and faculty director and chair of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado.��