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E.J. Dionne: The next two years are about democracy itself

It's the chant heard again and again at the women's marches the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated and echoed later in mobilizations on behalf of gun sanity and the Affordable Care Act, in defense of immigrants and refugees, and in support of democracy itself.

Those determined gatherings were, indeed, part of what democracy looks like. There is a reason the First Amendment to our Constitution asserts “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” immediately after it guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The assembly right is intimately linked to the next one on the First Amendment’s list: the people’s right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.