Protesters seek more inauguration permits

Antiwar activists are accusing the National Park Service of trying to block mass demonstrations along the route of President Bush's inaugural parade next month, opening a new front in a simmering dispute between anti-Bush groups and the government over access to visible public space.

International ANSWER, an umbrella group of antiwar protesters, yesterday contended that the Park Service is bending its own rules to deny anti-Bush demonstrators a permit to gather directly on Pennsylvania Avenue, the main promenade between the Capitol and the White House. The group, which applied for a permit last January, expects "many thousands" of people to participate in the planned demonstration.

"They're trying to make it a sanitized and pristine route and to disaggregate protests so that there is not a mass assembly of opposition sentiment that flows along the parade route," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a lawyer for ANSWER, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

But Bill Line, spokesman for the National Park Service, dismissed the allegation, saying "any suggestion that International ANSWER are not being accommodated is just false."

About a dozen groups have applied for permits to use Pennsylvania Avenue for protests, he said in an interview Thursday, contending that all would be accommodated in some form.

Verheyden-Hilliard said her group received a permit late Thursday to station protesters in what she described as a few small and isolated pockets, including areas behind bleachers that will be filled with Bush supporters.

This week's controversy reignites a longstanding clash over how to balance security and free speech. The Bush administration has tended to keep protesters far from the president, usually citing security concerns, particularly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Local communities have been increasingly wary about demonstration permits since 1999, when mass protests surrounding a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle turned violent.

Demonstrators were prevented from getting close to the Republican National Convention in New York this summer, and for a time the Secret Service took the unprecedented step of banning protests in Washington's Lafayette Park, which faces the White House. On the campaign trail last fall, people wearing anti-Bush T-shirts were often prevented from entering Bush campaign rallies.

Sarah Sloan, a spokeswoman for ANSWER, said that the group's protests are peaceful and that they have a track record to prove it. Sloan accused the government of using security concerns as a pretext to stifle protests and to help the White House project an image of support for its policies.

Antiwar groups say such limits on where they can protest threaten their First Amendment rights. At the Republican convention, the antiwar group United for Peace and Justice was denied permission to assemble in Central Park; city officials told them it was to prevent damage to the lawn.

"It was a huge long battle in which ultimately we were prevented from exercising our right to assemble and use Central Park," said Bill Dobbs, the group's media coordinator.

Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College who studies policing issues, said denying protestors permits is an increasingly common security tactic. Demonstrators ran into similar problems obtaining permits at the recent meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized countries in June at Sea Island, Ga., and at the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Miami in 2003.

"The legitimacy of the permit process has been corrupted," he said. "When people don't have confidence in the legitimacy of the permit process, it increases the likelihood you're going to have disruptive, unpermitted events."

International ANSWER said it may challenge the National Park Service's permitting process in court, alleging that the Park Service purposefully dragged its feet on processing the application.

Line countered that the Park Service and other agencies had actually dealt with requests much more quickly than before the inaugurations in 2001 and 1997. "We're acting on a quicker basis than four years ago," he said.

Verheyden-Hilliard also criticized what she contended was the unfair way in which the Park Service had awarded permits to the Presidential Inaugural Committee. The committee, a private group funded by Republican donors, has received permits for the use of almost all of Pennsylvania Avenue and has already begun to build bleachers.

Permits for use of Park Service property are supposed to be considered on a first-come, first-served basis and can only be filed within a year of a planned event. The inaugural committee's permit applications, obtained by ANSWER via a Freedom of Information Act request, were accepted more than 12 months before the inauguration. The document also shows that the Park Service filed the inaugural committee's application on its own initiative -- essentially applying to itself for a permit.

Sloan said Park Service officials told the group that the unorthodox procedure was "traditionally how it's done," since the winner of the election isn't known until November.

Line said he could not comment on the timing of the applications, since he did not have access to the paperwork.