The right to petition isn’t exactly the most venerated of all of the rights included in the First Amendment. There aren’t usually demonstrations by emboldened student groups who have found their right to petition abridged. And yet, without it, the other freedoms listed in that First Amendment would be fundamentally useless. Even many journalism students stumble when asked to name the five freedoms in the First Amendment: “press, religion, speech … and, uh … assembly, and … hmmm?”

The right to petition the government allows common citizens to address the wrongs they many experience in everyday life. Are you having your right to freely worship infringed upon? Isn’t it nice to know you can contact your local representative to tell them about the problem? Is your high-school newspaper being repressed by the administration? Isn’t it great that the case can go all the way up to the Supreme Court because our government is designed to be of and for the people?

No stated ability to freely practice religion, or speech or print whatever you’d like, or assemble is worth the paper it’s printed on if you have no ability to tell the government when those rights are being taken away from you.

It isn’t all that surprising that the forefathers thought this right to be fundamental to a well-functioning government. As freedom goes, it seemed to our revolutionary founders as ridiculous not to include some cause that allowed ordinary citizens to voice their grievances in an open marketplace of ideas.

Americans weren’t the first to recognize the importance of petitioning the government either. Consider that the Magna Carta in 1215 in its chapter 61 allows any man whose rights are transgressed upon to declare and claim redress from the King. It is affirmed again in the Declaration of Rights of 1689 — also known as the English Bill of Rights. The development of such a tool to speak to one’s government was then, logically, used by Thomas Jefferson to tell the king of England why the colonies felt they were being mistreated and was then included in our Bill of Rights.

Maybe the image problem with petition is that it’s so widespread in functioning democracies that no one thinks twice about using it. Every time you write to your congressman or head to a city hall meeting to tell them why they shouldn’t shut down your favorite neighborhood pool, you are reveling in a freedom the citizens of China and North Korea would be sanctioned for.

Think about it.

 — Rashah McChesney is a senior in journalism and mass communication. She is the president of the Leo Mores Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.