Post-Schna-ulations

The Land of the Free

McSweeney's Daily Reasons to Dispatch Bush"
DAY 123:

When President Bush traveled to Pittsburgh in 2002, a protester named Bill Neel who refused to move to the "designated free-speech zone"—a baseball field a third of a mile from Bush's speech—was arrested for disorderly conduct. At Neel's trial, a police detective testified that the Secret Service had told local police to keep "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views" in the free-speech zone. The judge threw out the charge, saying, "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?"
Similar incidents have occurred at Bush appearances around the country. At a Florida rally in 2001, three demonstrators were arrested for holding up signs outside of the designated zone; the next year, seven protesters were arrested outside of a rally at the University of South Florida. At a St. Louis event in 2003, a woman and her 5-year-old daughter who protested outside of the approved area were detained by police and taken away in separate vehicles. This year, a West Virginia couple wearing anti-Bush T-shirts was detained by the Secret Service at a July 4 rally, and on September 17, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq was arrested and charged with trespassing at a Laura Bush appearance.
When seven AIDS activists were ejected from a Bush event in Washington, D.C., on September 9, the Secret Service told journalists that if they approached the demonstrators, they would not be allowed to re-enter the event. One agent told a reporter who was prevented from returning to the speech that there was a "different set of rules" for journalists who did not talk to the activists.
Brett Bursey, who held up a "No War for Oil" sign amidst hundreds of Bush supporters at a 2002 appearance by the president in Columbia, South Carolina, was arrested by a police officer who told him that "it's the content of your sign that's the problem." He was charged with trespassing; when that charge was dropped because Bursey was on public property at the time of his arrest, the Justice Department charged Bursey with "entering a restricted area around the President of the United States." He faced six months in jail; in January, he was convicted and fined $500. The federal magistrate, Bristow Marchant, denied Bursey's request for a jury trial, and later ruled that the protester had not been unreasonably singled out among the Bush supporters by police—although other people were there, he said, they did not refuse to leave, as Bursey did.
In a May 2003 terrorist advisory, the Homeland Security Department told local law-enforcement agencies to pay special attention to anyone who "expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government." In April of that year, after the federally funded California Anti-Terrorism Task Force fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters at the Port of Oakland, a spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center said that "if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act."
Secret Service agent Brian Marr told NPR that the agency creates free-speech zones because "these individuals may be so involved with trying to shout their support or nonsupport that inadvertently they may walk out into the motorcade route and be injured ... we want to be sure that they are able to go home at the end of the evening and not be injured in any way." The ACLU is suing the Secret Service for suppressing protest at Bush events in Arizona, California, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas, and elsewhere.

(Sources: James Bovard, "Free-Speech Zone," The American Conservative, December 15, 2003. See article at: amconmag.com. Jonathan M. Katz, "Thou Dost Protest Too Much," Slate, September 21, 2004. See article at: slate.com. Dana Milbank, "Secret Service Not Coddling Hecklers," Washington Post, September 10, 2004. See article at: washingtonpost.com.)

posted by Schna @ 8:02 AM