The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent

A National Lawyers Guild Report 45
e-mails were adequate to validate applicants as press members.
“Even less secure were the non-photographic identifications
provided to FTAA participants, staff, law-enforcement personnel and
neighboring business people…the serial numbers did not correspond
to any particular individuals, and the cards were given in bulk lots of
several hundred to the private security personnel in neighboring
office buildings for dispersion to the workers in those
buildings…<strong>The</strong> system designed to permit entry of motor vehicles to
the frozen zone was similarly flawed.” 122 Police squad cars
monitored nearly every block, and Florida Highway Patrol troopers
searched vehicles before allowing them to move on. 123 Police
stopped individuals at random, conducting pat-downs and “dumping
the contents of their backpacks into gutters,” according to Linda
Rodriguez-Taseff, president of the South Florida chapter of the
ACLU.
Free-Speech Zones and the Secret Service
So-called “free speech” zones, also referred to as secure zones or
protest zones, are areas established by law enforcement for protesters
to stand in. <strong>The</strong>y are often fenced off and at some distance from the
event being protested. A lawsuit brought before the 2000 Democratic
National Convention in Los Angeles resulted in an injunction
striking down a secure zone of more than eight million square feet
around the convention site, striking down the City’s parade-permit
ordinance, and striking down the City’s park-permit regulations.
Following the Court’s issuance of a preliminary injunction, the City
stipulated to a permanent injunction. <strong>The</strong> Los Angeles chapter of the
National Lawyers Guild was a plaintiff in SEIU v. City of Los
Angeles, 124 with Guild lawyers as counsel. <strong>The</strong> court granted the
injunction, finding that “the sidewalks and streets contained within
the designated ‘secure zone’…are traditional public fora for the
exercise of First Amendment rights.”
When the President travels, Secret Service agents visit the venue
in advance and give orders to local law enforcement to establish
free-speech zones. Protesters opposing the President’s policies are
then quarantined in those zones, far from sight of the President
and out of view of the press. When President Bush was in
Pittsburgh on Labor Day in 2002, Bill Neel, a 65-year-old retired
steelworker, held a sign proclaiming, “<strong>The</strong> Bush family must
surely love the poor, they made so many of us.” 125 Local police