I was about to reply that today’s protests seem to have gone off peacefully till this article came up in my news feeds.
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/14/portland-police-ice-facility-riot/
As far as I know though, the Portland protest, and the assassinations of the Minnesota legislator, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, seem to have been the exceptions.
In the US, generally, you aren’t so much asking permission as giving notice that your expecting a generate a crowd, despite the phrasing. Freedoms of speech, assembly and association are still a thing.
The purpose behind it is to give emergency services a heads up to minimize obstruction of normal or emergency traffic and to provide some level of crowd control to minimize the chance of flash stampedes. Like if some idiot sets off a firework, everyone thinks it’s a gunshot and started running.
Approval is generally automatic, but failure to go through the approval process could result in your peaceful protest turning into a riot, or being declared a riot.
Alabama here. Battery and mains powered ones are generally called weed eaters.
The gas powered ones are called a string of curses that would get me banned. Usually while trying to get them to crank. There’s a reason I went electric.
Agreed