How protesters challenged march ban--and won
By Dustin Langley
Boston
In the days before the Democratic National
Convention, a war of nerves took place between protest
organizers and the various federal agencies working under the
umbrella of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
"We will win our battle in the courts or we will win it in
the streets," Steven Kirschbaum of Steelworkers Local 8751, an
organizer with the Coalition to Protest the DNC, told a media
conference. The coalition, which had called a July 25 protest,
challenged and eventually defeated attempts by the City of
Boston and the JTTF to prevent protesters from marching down
Causeway Street in front of the Fleet Center in Boston, site of
the convention.
Maureen Skehan, an organizer for ANSWER Boston, which
initiated the coalition, said, "We will not allow our rights to
be taken away so that the Democratic Party can have
unrestricted access to our city for their posh parties and
convention, which are costing almost $100 million. We will
bring the message to this convention loud and clear: Bring the
troops home now!"
The coalition filed suit on July 19 in federal court against
the City of Boston's refusal to allow protests at the site of
the DNC. Its legal team included lead counsel John Pavlos and
attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and National
Lawyers Guild. Two days later, Judge Douglas P. Woodlock ruled
that the city had no legal or constitutional basis for
preventing the march. He issued an injunction ordering the city
to grant a permit.
"It's our hope that what happened today will begin pushing
back the efforts by the government to restrict free speech,
right of assembly and the right to march," said Peter Gilbert,
an activist from North Carolina who traveled to Boston to help
organize the march on the DNC. "The police commissioner and the
mayor of New York City should be condemned for denying those
organizing the big protest at the Republican convention in late
August the right to rally in an acceptable place. We hope that
what happened today shames the New York City government for
violating the rights of protestors."
Although Judge Woodlock ruled in favor of the permit to
march in front of the Fleet Center, he demonstrated his
contempt for free speech by ruling, in a separate case, that a
"protest pen" would be allowed to stand. The city, in
anticipation of angry protests at the DNC, had constructed what
many described as "internment pens" to contain demonstrators.
This area is under an abandoned elevated train line, surrounded
by a double row of chain-link fences covered with thick mesh
and topped with rolls of razor wire.
Organizers with ANSWER Boston denounced the pen in a public
statement on July 21, saying, "We refuse to be penned in, in
any way. The City of Boston and the Department of Homeland
Security have no right to decree that the First Amendment only
applies in a cage. We will exercise our right to free speech
anywhere in the city we choose, especially on Causeway Street,
at the site of the DNC, throughout the entire duration of the
convention."
The judge himself admitted that the pen was "corrosive of
democratic values" and said, "There is nothing more that could
be added to the pens that would be more of an affront to free
speech." Despite this, he ruled that the pens would be allowed
to stand.
ANSWER Boston responded to this decision at a press
conference calling on protestors to "boycott the pens" and join
the mass march on the DNC on July 25. Thousands responded to
the call, marching past the DNC and the empty pens, bringing
their anti-war, pro-worker message to the streets. They and
thousands more will continue their march--onward to the
Republican National Convention in New York and then to the
Million Worker March in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 17.
Reprinted from the Aug. 5, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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