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Protesters surrounded by barbed wire Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12430858&BRD=1710&PAG=461&dept_id=99697&rfi=6"To tell us that we can’t march on the DNC, and then to tell us well, you’re welcome to duck under a steel girder and be penned in surrounded by barbed wire and snipers and surveillance cameras, the message they’re sending is that dissent is a crime," he said.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12430858&BRD=1710&PAG=461&dept_id=99697&rfi=6
Protesters file suit
SARAH KARUSH Associated Press Writer 07/22/2004
By THEO EMERY
Associated Press Writer
BOSTON -- A federal judge walked through the streets, alleyways and lots around the FleetCenter on Wednesday to see firsthand the protest and march areas that are the subject of two lawsuits filed by groups planning to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention.
The National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts sued the city in U.S. District Court on Wednesday on behalf of The Black Tea Society and other groups, asking that a designated demonstration zone be altered, fences taken down and protesters allowed to come and go as they want during the convention.
In the other lawsuit, filed Monday, the ANSWER coalition, several other protest groups and two city councilors sued over the city’s denial of their request to march past the FleetCenter. The city instead altered their route so it would end at the demonstration zone, bypassing Causeway Street, which abuts the FleetCenter.
Police Superintendent Robert Dunford walked U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, as well as attorneys for protesters and the city, through the security area known as the "soft zone" and into the smaller protest area, as a gaggle of reporters, photographers, and camera crews circled the group, stopping traffic and drawing stares from gawking tourists.
As they walked the boundaries of the 28,000-square-foot area designated for organized protests, the group skirted idling construction equipment and stepped around pylons and orange traffic barrels. They stopped next to the tall chain-link fence topped with mesh that stretched up to an unused overpass above, where razor wire had been unrolled.
"We were never told there would be mesh. We were never told there would be netting. We were never told there would be razor wire," said attorney Jeffrey M. Feuer, an attorney representing groups in both lawsuits. "This is the definition of a pen."
The group continued, ducking under a girder in the protest zone spray-painted with "Caution watch your head" and before exiting the area to an adjacent parking lot where delegates will disembark from buses. They continued along Causeway Street, where the ANSWER coalition and other groups want to march.
Afterward, Dustin Langley, a spokesman for the ANSWER coalition, called the protest area "a garbage pit, fenced in and ringed with razor wire."
"To tell us that we can’t march on the DNC, and then to tell us well, you’re welcome to duck under a steel girder and be penned in surrounded by barbed wire and snipers and surveillance cameras, the message they’re sending is that dissent is a crime," he said.
At a hearing earlier Wednesday on the march lawsuit, Boston Police Department attorney Mary Jo Harris argued that allowing the march onto Causeway Street would compromise public safety.
"If there is a fire and we have to evacuate, how are we going to get people out?" she said.
The U.S. Attorney’s office intervened in the march lawsuit on behalf of the city, arguing that large-scale protests must be kept away from the FleetCenter to maintain security.
Woodlock asked the Assistant U.S. Attorney, George Henderson, why the city should impose tight restrictions during the convention, and not during other large FleetCenter events, such as Boston Bruins games.
"We think the security risks and the people who are going to be in this convention are different," Henderson said. "We have greater risks, we have very high people in government, and the need for good protection is very important."
Woodlock did not immediately rule on the groups’ request to march on the FleetCenter, instead asking the city for more information about the capacity of Causeway Street and an estimate of what it would cost to alter the demonstration zone.
He scheduled a hearing on the new lawsuit for today.
©The Herald News 2004
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