ACLU Sues Over Convention Protest Plans

The American Civil Liberties Union and several protest groups filed a lawsuit in federal court Friday challenging as unconstitutional Los Angeles’ effort to contain and control demonstrations planned during the Democratic National Convention.

The lawsuit contends that a designated protest zone located across a vast parking lot from Staples Center and outside a large security perimeter is too far from convention delegates. The suit also takes aim at the city’s parade and permit policies, saying they give officials too much discretion to deny the exercise of 1st Amendment rights of speech and peaceful assembly.

Demonstrators are particularly derisive of the city’s plan for a designated protest area. They call that area “the protest pit.”

“The LAPD has announced plans to declare a huge swath of downtown Los Angeles off-limits to speech activity,” said ACLU attorney Daniel P. Tokaji. “But the Constitution may not be put on ice simply because the Democratic Convention is in town. . . . We must not sacrifice free speech at the altar of security.”

Representatives of the city attorney’s office and the Los Angeles Police Department defended their plans to restrict access around Staples Center and to establish a protest zone outside that security perimeter, saying they were reasonable. They vowed to oppose the groups’ demands in court.

“The LAPD has not just said willy-nilly we need to do this,” said Deputy City Atty. Debra Gonzales. She noted that the security needs of the Secret Service and the convention require the no-access zone around Staples.

Gonzales said the city has tried to balance the needs of the public, the demonstrators who wish to be heard and the convention.

Three of the organizations that joined in the lawsuit--the Service Employees International Union, the D2K Convention Planning Coalition and the Los Angeles coalition to stop the execution of activist Mumia Abu-Jamal--said they have been unable to obtain permits for marches from downtown to Staples Center during the convention week.

“We are obviously very concerned that we are not allowed to get close enough to the Staples Center for the delegates to hear our case,” said Margaret Prescod, an organizer with the D2K group, which is making plans for demonstrations. “We have no intention of being stuck in the protest pit. The protest pit is like a prison for us.”

The groups are seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the city and the LAPD from denying access to the sidewalks, streets and public spaces surrounding Staples Center and from enforcing “parade and assembly schemes” that violate their rights to free speech.

Police officials insist that the broad no-access zone around the Staples Center area for anyone without convention credentials is an essential component of their security planning. The zone is bordered by Venice Boulevard on the south, the Harbor Freeway on the west, Olympic Boulevard on the north and Flower Street on the east.

The designated protest site is in a fenced parking lot on Olympic Boulevard between Francisco and Georgia streets.

During the 1996 conventions in Chicago and San Diego, protesters also went to court to move protest sites to more prominent locations.

Support From Hayden

In San Diego they were successful in getting the site moved to across the street from the convention center so that delegates might hear their message. But they lost the Chicago case and had to settle for a location across the parking lot from the sports arena where the Democrats assembled.

The groups that filed suit Friday argue that their ability to speak to convention delegates is severely impeded by the denial of access to the immediate Staples Center area.

Longtime activist and state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) is also a party to the lawsuit that names as defendants the city, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and Cmdr. Thomas Lorenzen, head of LAPD’s convention planning.

Hayden told reporters that he believes “too much law and order breeds disorder.”

Hayden, a lifelong activist who was one of the Chicago 7 charged in connection with the 1968 protests during the Democratic National Convention in that city, said demonstration organizers want a peaceful convention, but also want their issues--including the growing gap between rich and poor, corporate globalization and human rights, labor standards and environmental protection--heard outside the convention hall.

Attorney Carol Sobel summed up the groups’ position succinctly: “We want to be across the street” from Staples.

LAPD Cmdr. David Kalish expressed disappointment that the ACLU had a filed suit after declining an invitation last summer to join in planning for the convention.

“We have made a good-faith effort to balance security needs with facilitating the 1st Amendment rights issues,” he said. “We have a number of critical responsibilities. We have to ensure public safety, maintain public order, ensure the convention is able to conduct business, facilitate everyone’s 1st Amendment rights and assure the city is able to function.”