Confusion reigns as security rules

The "Demonstration Zone" at the Democratic National Convention:
An "Irretrievably Sad" Affront to the First Amendment
By Michael Avery

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Sunday 25 July 2004
Demonstrators who want to be within sight and sound of the delegates entering and leaving the Democratic National Convention at the Fleet Center in Boston this coming week will be forced to protest in a special "demonstration zone" adjacent to the terminal where buses carrying the delegates will arrive. The zone is large enough only for 1000 persons to safely congregate and is bounded by two chain link fences separated by concrete highway barriers. The outermost fence is covered with black mesh that is designed to repel liquids. Much of the area is under an abandoned elevated train line. The zone is covered by another black net which is topped by razor wire. There will be no sanitary facilities in the zone and tables and chairs will not be permitted. There is no way for the demonstrators to pass written materials to the convention delegates.

The federal judge who heard a challenge to the demonstration zone by protest groups on July 22d stated in open court, "I, at first, thought before taking the view [of the site] that the characterizations of the space as being like an internment camp were litigation hyperbole. I now believe that it's an understatement. One cannot conceive of what other elements you would put in place to make a space more of an affront to the idea of free expression ..." Despite that, the judge denied the groups' challenge to the conditions and ruled that they were justified by concerns about the safety of the convention delegates. The hearing on the case and the judge's ruling contain important lessons about what has happened to freedom of speech during the War on Terror.

Following the lead of Attorney General Ashcroft, law enforcement officials in the United States have taken two steps that have been devastating to the exercise of free speech rights. First, principles and tactics that arguably, but only arguably, may sometimes be appropriate with respect to the conduct of war or the prevention of terrorism are now routinely employed with respect to ordinary law enforcement. Second, the focus has shifted from the punishment of people who have committed crimes to a strategy that pretends to be able to prevent crime. Taken together these steps have the consequence that not only those who have committed crimes are subject to control by law enforcement. Those who fall into general categories of people who are suspected of having the potential to commit criminal acts may also be monitored, physically controlled and in certain cases, detained, by law enforcement.

In Boston the police have no specific information that individual people or groups plan to assault convention delegates. Of course, if such acts did occur, the number of law enforcement agents scheduled to take the streets in Boston is more than sufficient to apprehend and prosecute anyone who would commit such an assault. The justification for the demonstration zone, however, is that such assaults must be prevented before they happen. There is no evidence that they may happen beyond what the judge characterized as the "generic experience of the past several years at such events." Everyone who plans to protest is assumed to be someone who may throw rocks and urine at delegates, or who would break up tables and chairs to obtain weapons to attack delegates or police.

On three occasions during the hearing, and once again while announcing his decision, the Judge referred to the plaintiffs who brought the case to complain about the demonstration area as the "defendants." It does not take a psychoanalyst to know that this slip of the tongue has meaning. The fact is that with no evidence whatsoever those who would protest close to the site of the Convention have already been convicted of being up to no good.

This approach represents a major shift in values in our criminal justice system and the principles that protect rights of free expression. The criminal justice issues were appreciated by my twelve year old daughter who attended the court proceedings with me. "Dad," she whispered during the hearing, "I thought you were innocent until proven guilty. That doesn't seem to be what the judge is doing here."

The shift in First Amendment law can be appreciated by comparing the judge's ruling on the DNC demonstration zone with the Supreme Court's decision in 1969 in the Tinker case where it upheld the right of children to wear black arm bands to school to protest the Vietnam War. The school officials had argued that the arm bands would lead to disruption of the educational process. The Supreme Court rejected the argument, holding that "undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression." In Boston, as in the Tinker case, the authorities have no evidence beyond an "undifferentiated fear" of trouble.

In other cases the Supreme Court has recognized that the First Amendment requires "breathing room." Where the government is forced to interfere with free expression in order to further other legitimate state interests, the interference should be as limited as possible in order to avoid "chilling" the willingness of people to engage in free speech. The demonstration zone in Boston, on the other hand, is a walk in freezer for free speech. Experienced protestors will avoid the humiliation of being subjected to the conditions in this zone, and less experienced citizens who might wish to convey some message to convention delegates will be too terrified by the netting and razor wire to go anywhere near the site. I shudder to think what message is conveyed to children like my daughter about the possibilities for free expression in this country.

In his decision the judge said that he found it "irretrievably sad" that circumstances required the conditions in the demonstration zone. Of course, the court was free to decide that the government had not proven that the conditions were necessary and a more intrepid judge would have done so. What is genuinely "irretrievably sad" is that the judicial branch has accepted so uncritically the demands of the security arm of the state and that one of the lessons of this convention is that the First Amendment is now in urgent need of a life support system to survive.

Michael Avery is the President of the National Lawyers Guild and a constitutional law professor at Suffolk Law School in Boston. 

Convention site locked down tight
Air monitors, retinal scans -- and no trash cans -- are part of security plan.


Security personnel were on the lookout Saturday on Causeway Street near Boston's FleetCenter, where double barricades have been set up in preparation for the convention. -- Robert F. Bukaty / Associated Press


By Mary Beth Schneider
mary.beth.schneider@indystar.com
July 25, 2004


BOSTON -- The first thing Democrats arriving in Boston see are the smiles of the volunteers welcoming them to this city's first national political convention.

The second are the police, military and other security forces, who have transformed this convention town into a fortress.

Barricades, razor-wire fences and dog patrols ring the FleetCenter, where Democrats will meet Monday through Thursday to nominate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts for president.

Security agents loaded with sophisticated equipment disguised in backpacks monitored air quality in that area, on the lookout for radiological, biological and chemical attacks.

Air Force Maj. Eric Butterbaugh, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., said fighter pilots would be on patrol over Boston.

Litter is everywhere on the sidewalks surrounding the FleetCenter. There's nowhere to put it. Trash cans have been removed from that area.

But there are many gray rubber trash cans at the security gates.

During a light rainfall Saturday, those cans were filled with umbrellas and other items confiscated from people seeking entry into the center, most of them members of the news media.

Thousands of delegates, journalists and political dignitaries will have descended on Boston by tonight, when welcoming parties for state delegations will be held.

Purses, backpacks and computers weren't merely scanned -- they were unzipped, unbuckled, every pocket opened and every item inside inspected.

Karen Horseman, a former Indianapolis City-County Council member who is a delegate, said police were patrolling the hallways as she attended a credentials committee meeting in a hotel.

Perry Secrest, an Indianapolis attorney vacationing in Boston, said there were military officers, dressed in camouflage, patrolling on a subway train he rode.

Electronic and wooden signs warned motorists along the highways of closures. About 40 miles of highway leading into and out of the city will be closed from afternoon into the evening during the convention proceedings.

The city sits on Boston Harbor, and its waterways also were under tight security.

Convention delegates and others have been warned not to roam without their hotel keys, because they can't get back into the hotel without them.

Dan Parker, executive director of the Indiana Democratic Party, said one high-tech hotel was even using a retinal scan to screen people entering its doors.

Mike Harmless, chairman of the Indiana delegation, said he will receive a "walk-through" of the FleetCenter today so he can brief Indiana delegates on what to expect Monday, when most of them will get their first look at the convention locale.

But, he said, he had known that in a nation so much more aware of terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, security concerns -- always high at conventions -- would reach new levels.

"We knew it would be like this. We could tell that it was going to be dramatically increased from (the 2000 convention in) Los Angeles, where I thought it was very secure," Harmless said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

What ever happened to the "Land of the Free"  guess it is all behind the barbed wire .....-
  "Cameras, monitored in Washington, D.C., by the Department of Homeland Security, can be seen on many street corners in the soft zone."

  Free Speech Behind the Razor Wire
  By Mark Baard, Wired News
  July 27, 2004

  BOSTON -- The estimated 5,000 protesters at the Democratic National Convention this week have so far bumped heads over their political differences. In some cases, they have even barred one another from their scheduled (and permitted) events.

  But activists have been largely united in one civil action: their boycott of the so-called free-speech zone carved out by the U.S. Secret Service and local authorities, the only spot where protesters will be able to shout their messages to the delegates arriving on buses in a nearby parking lot.

  The protesters are also coordinating actions outside the free-speech zone by sending text messages on their wireless phones. Some protesters for a short time Monday converted the zone into a mock prison camp by donning hoods and marching in the cage with their hands behind their backs.

  The protest zone, which most people here simply call "the cage," is beneath an elevated section of disused subway tracks near a newly paved bus parking lot.

  Activists say the zone resembles the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

  The zone, surrounded by two layers of chain link fences mounted on Jersey barriers, draped with black mesh and topped with razor wire, violates the protesters' free-speech rights, said a legal observer for the Boston chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

  "You can't have free speech inside a prison," said the observer, Tony Naro, a recent college graduate who plans to start law school this fall.

  Observers like Naro attend rallies and marches to record incidents where the authorities appear to be violating the protesters' constitutional rights.

  Naro noted that when the Boston Police union was planning to protest at the DNC over a contract dispute with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, "there was no talk of putting them into a free-speech zone. It's the people with the guns who get to have free speech."

  On Tuesday, a sole, potbellied protester shouted into a microphone on a makeshift stage provided by the city. Right-to-lifers also crashed the place and covered the area with anti-abortion slogans, thinking the area would see more foot traffic.

  But audience members, who have been almost exclusively reporters and photographers, must stand in the line of sight of the loudspeakers mounted along the steel beams overhead. Delegates on the other side of the fence will have a hard time hearing anything.

  The Black Tea Society, an anarchist group, as well as the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union, have all sued to either uncage the free-speech zone, or move it closer to the delegates. But all of those efforts failed, and "the fence stays," said Boston Police Department spokeswoman Beverly Ford.

  Anarchists are also wary of being tracked by the cameras mounted in the cage. Most have gotten the message, through wireless text messaging, websites and word of mouth, to avoid the cage and the surrounding Boston Police-patrolled "soft zone," which is immediately outside the "hard zone," an area controlled by the uniformed division of the Secret Service.

  Cameras, monitored in Washington, D.C., by the Department of Homeland Security, can be seen on many street corners in the soft zone.

  Protesters will thus be scarce through the soft zone.

  "The word is to avoid any area that is fenced in," said Naro.

  http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64349,00.html

A demonstrator is subdued by police during a protest near the FleetCenter Thursday, July 29, 2004 in Boston. The final day of the Democratic National Convention brought the first confrontation between police and protesters. Several hundred demonstrators converged in an area on Canal Street -- near the FleetCenter but outside of the fenced-in 'free speech zone.' (AP Photo/Patricia McDonnell)