The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent

A National Lawyers Guild Report 21
strong feelings about First Amendment stuff, but we have got some
idiots coming here. Some will come and say whatever obnoxious
things they want to say and go home. Some will come here to
disrupt, to make a spectacle out of what’s going on. <strong>The</strong>y are going
to get a very ugly response.” 37
<strong>The</strong> Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. gave the media an
inflated number of expected protesters before the September 2002
World Bank/IMF meetings. <strong>The</strong> chief told the City Council and the
press that the Police Department expected 20,000 to 30,000
protesters, despite the fact that the Department’s internal operation
plans specified no more than 4,000 anticipated attendees. 38
In Washington, D.C., the media reported that law-enforcement
authorities met on September 20, 2002 to plan maneuvers against
groups planning disruptive or violent demonstrations during the
World Bank/IMF meetings. Terrance Gainer and D.C. police had met
with the U.S. Attorney’s office and the Department of Justice to
discuss protest plans that, they claimed, included efforts to shut
down the District, clog the Capitol Beltway, and vandalize stores and
police cars. 39 <strong>The</strong> Washington Post quoted Gainer as saying that
authorities discussed whether protest activities “are so deleterious to
security efforts that we ought to take proactive action, whether there
are violations of the law that are so potentially egregious that they
outweigh the First Amendment rights of someone to come in and
speak with their life and shut down our intersections.” 40
In response, on September 20, 2002 the Anti-Capitalist Convergence
(ACC), a coalition of activists formed in 2001, issued a press release
saying that police have been “spreading lies about the nature of the
demonstrations and the actions planned.” 41 <strong>The</strong> statement indicated
that the ACC’s plans called for marches, bike rides, antiwar
leafleting, and theater. It cited accusations that the group was
planning violence as “reckless and unfounded.” Guild member Mara
Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney for the D.C.-based Partnership for
Civil Justice, also dismissed Gainer’s comments:
[Claiming that protesters plan violence] is their
standard demonization tactic. <strong>The</strong>re has been no call
for violence by any of the people in organizations
who are coming to Washington to protest. <strong>The</strong>
police department is once again demonstrating their
contempt for the constitutional rights of protesters in