Abstract The right of peaceful assembly is often touted as preserving the promise of fundamental political or social change. It ensures the people’s power to secure the franchise or social inclusion and to overthrow oppressive regimes, whether colonial, apartheid, or dictatorial. But assemblies come in a range of other forms, including annual parades, smaller political protests, and weekly gatherings of social groups. All these forms of assembly sustain and reinforce the capacity for democratic politics, and their value does not turn on their expressive ends alone. Both the possibility of effective democratic politics and a proper construction of the right of peaceful assembly demand that we recognize the value of assembly, as assembly, and its latent and constitutive political functions. This chapter thus explores assembly as a form of social and political action, demonstrating that the act of assembly has independent, intrinsic value, apart from and often prior to, either its expressive or instrumental political functions.