By Benjamin Grant Ladner
The upcoming Democratic National Convention inspires optimism among many advocates for free-speech and open government; an Obama presidency, should it come to pass, is seen as a welcome opportunity to redraw the balance between government secrecy and accountability. That optimism, however, must be tempered by what stands to go on outside of the convention, in the Pepsi Center’s parking lot and on the streets of Denver.
The Denver Police Department and the federal Secret Service have crafted a ‘security’ plan to deal with protesters that, for all its sensitivity to free speech concerns, could well have been designed by the Chinese government censors responsible for accommodating protests at the Olympics. Among the plan’s more offensive features is the oxymoronic “Free Speech Zone”: a 50,000 sq. ft. cage surrounded by two layers of chain link fence, situated 250 yards away from the Pepsi Center’s entrance and, thus, the delegates and party officials whom protesters seek to influence. Worse, protesters will be forced to leave the area entirely at 3 p.m. each day–just as delegates begin to arrive at the convention.
The plan is offered in the name of security, of course, and officials claim that the anticipated content of the protests played no part in the formulation of the policy. This, however, is at best a partial truth. The plans for Denver were born in the backlash to the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, where activists’ mostly peaceful direct action–e.g., the blocking of intersections to prevent delegates from getting from their hotels to the convention center–nearly shut down the WTO Ministerial Conference.
Questions of validity aside, the effectiveness of such tactics is inarguable: in addition to bringing the conference to a standstill, they attracted media attention around the world and can be credited with fostering a broader national consciousness on the topic of globalization.
The reaction of the government, re-awakened to the destabilizing potential of mass-protest, is generally referred to as the ‘Miami Model,’ named for the dissent-quashing actions of Miami police during the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas conference.
At its core, the Miami Model calls for pre-emptive marginalization of protests to justify overreaction by police: the public is made to believe that protests and protesters are by nature ‘anarchistic’ and violent and therefore not entitled to a constitutional standard of treatment. The Bush administration has even taken the additional step of discriminating between individual activists based on cause: at presidential and vice-presidential appearances, demonstrators critical of administration policy are frequently quarantined out of sight and sound or arrested, while supportive sign-holders go undisturbed. This is the historical grounding of the 2008 DNC’s policy on demonstrators.
I don’t mean to dismiss outright the need for security measures at the convention; only to insist on accurately characterizing the measures as proposed. While security is certainly a legitimate concern, security can be provided in a manner that does not detract from First Amendment rights. For example, the searching of protesters would obviate the need for the most stringent security measures. While searching involves a trade-off of First Amendment and Fourth Amendment concerns, the goal of DNC protesters is to be seen and heard by delegates and television audiences; submitting to a brief pat-down and bag search would seem to be a reasonable price for the right to be situated at a communicable distance to delegates entering the Pepsi Center, particularly if the policy is announced in advance (so everyone knows to leave their pot at home).
But there is one part of the security plan that can’t be tolerated under any circumstances: the fence. The symbolism of caging dissent is so antithetical to a free society that it is bizarre that the idea was ever considered, much less implemented. Accordingly, a reasonable compromise on the security concerns would include these modifications: 1) no fence; 2) moving the designated protest area to within a reasonable shouting distance of delegates as they enter the arena; 3) stipulating that demonstrators, by entering the designated area, consent automatically to a pat-down and bag search; and 4) allowing protesters to stay until the last delegate leaves at night.
It is important that Denver’s current plan not be judged in a vacuum. This is 2008 and the Democratic Party is nominating a candidate who, despite certain considered capitulations, seems to stand for substantive change. If the party and its nominee allow this policy to be implemented uncritically, they will be associated with it and held accountable for it. Simply put, on this issue Barack Obama needs to show in practice the fortitude which he so often assumes rhetorically.
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Ben Ladner, a junior at Stanford University, is working for CFAC as an intern.