We've all heard of cases of police running over crowds in some circumstances, or of the odd shooting (actually when?). But that's not what the average protester in the US will realistically, honestly deal with on the average protest.
There have been 104 incidents of vehicles driving into protests between May 27 and September 27, 2020, with two fatalities in that time period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vehicle-ramming_incide...
> happily beat you up, run you over, or shoot and kill you for disruptive protests.
Fun fact: most people arrested at protests end up arrested because they try to follow police instructions to disperse. The police keep directing them into a closed off area (aka bottling) and then arrest them in for failure to disperse.
Elsewhere, people were firing fireworks mortars into occupied federal buildings, with little to no recourse.
"Good" protesters were overshadowed in media coverage of "bad" protesters, but I also saw a grocery store get completely ransacked for no reason other than people decided they could. There was so much damage that the store was closed for months to renovate, turning a poor neighborhood into a food desert.
Also note the entire crowd chanting "burn it down".
Also worth noting that the people who started the fire were there because they thought people protesting police violence was bad - they weren't dangerous liberals or antifa or whatever other nonsense you'll spew: they were far-right "bugaloo boys"
No, people can protest wherever they want as a rule, under the freedom of assembly clause in the first amendment. It's pretty clear, and is well established (as are the exceptions). The wording of Article 12 in the E.U. fundamental rights charter is, by my reading, purposefully more restrictive than how the Supreme Court has generally interpreted "Freedom of Assembly" in the U.S., but I am not an expert on that.
In practice, you sometimes see things like "Free Speech Zones", which are indeed Orwellian, but also controversial and exceptional. You shouldn't think of them as the rule, because you also see things like the CHOP in Seattle.
I find it strange because in Europe the norm is to disturb the daily life. Farmers spray policemen with milk, train operators stop working, the younger and more anarchist ones burn cars and clash with the police, the more pacifist ones tie or glue themselves to something making a huge scene.