An oppressive zone
THE DESIGNATED protest zone for the Democratic National Convention looks a lot better on paper than it does from the ground. As currently constructed, the 28,000-square-foot area near North Station is more suggestive of a holding pen than an area for upholding constitutionally protected speech.
Technically the zone seems to meet court requirements: It is within the sight and sound of delegates, many of whom are expected to arrive and depart at an adjacent parking lot for buses. But the combination of abandoned steel transit rails overhead, concrete barriers, plastic sheeting, and a double row of cyclone fences is more likely to choke dissent than encourage it. Especially oppressive is the vast netting that stretches across the zone, evoking trawlers on the hunt for groundfish.
"There is no need for fences and nets unless you're trying to simulate East Germany," said Ron Newman, a computer programmer from Somerville who stopped to examine the zone yesterday en route to his job in the North End. "We're supposed to tolerate some disorder to make sure people can express their opinions." As Newman pedaled away on his bicycle, National Guard troops moved in by truck.
Boston Police Superintendent Robert Dunford, who heads local security planning for the convention, expressed disappointment that the girders and rails now throwing shadows on the protest zone were not removed in time for the convention. But Dunford insists that the fencing and netting is necessary to foil protesters bent on violence. He cited violent protesters who used slingshots to shoot ball bearings at police and conventiongoers during the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles. Mary Jo Harris, attorney for the Boston Police Department, cited incidents of demonstrators armed with urine-filled squirt guns as sufficient reason to wrap the zone in plastic sheeting.
The police and civil liberties activists made good-faith efforts to design a protest zone that balanced the needs of public safety and free speech near the convention site. But the current configuration is weighted too heavily on the side of security. The area designed to accommodate 35 buses for arriving and departing delegates turns out to be roughly twice the size of the area designated for 4,000 demonstrators.
US District Judge Douglas Woodlock toured the site yesterday following the filing of a lawsuit by civil liberties groups. Woodlock could restore some balance by widening the protest zone and ordering police to remove the netting and sheeting. Police are capable of handling violent demonstrators.
In his book "Gag Rule" -- a spirited defense of civil liberties -- author Lewis Lapham notes that "dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors." But first, such dissent needs to be unlocked.
