Taste of Chicago restricts AFSC’s free speech to special "zone"
By David Mitchell
During times of war, sometimes government limits Americans’ freedom. President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, allowing people to be restrained without the right to petition the government to answer why they were being held. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson used the Espionage Act to suppress free speech criticizing World War I. In Schenck v. the United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), a man was prosecuted under the Espionage Act for sending letters to men who had been drafted, telling them to resist the draft.
On June 30, Chicago Police at the Taste of Chicago banned young war protestors from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) who had been handing out pamphlets explaining alternate ways to pay for college besides joining the military. The police threatened to remove AFSC members from the park if they continued, and later ordered them to go to an arbitrarily designated free speech zone.
The pamphlets the youths were handing out near military recruiters also warned potential enlisters that due to “stop loss” orders now in effect, the military can lengthen and change any contracts without warning. The Chicago Police declined to comment on why the protestors were banned, but the military recruiters were allowed to remain. “You are fully entitled to stand your ground when your picketing or leafleting is lawful and to demand full identification from anyone seeking to prevent you from exercising your rights,” said Charles Nissim-Sabat, a civil rights attorney and advisor to the Chicago Committee Opposed to the Militarism of Youth (CCOMY). “You are entitled to redress in court in every such instance.”
On July 2, members of the AFSC, ChicagOtra (a social justice organization), and the CCOMY gathered at Buckingham Fountain for a protest. They read the Bill of Rights and began a procession toward military recruiters at Taste of Chicago, intending to leaflet in defiance of their banishment to the free speech zone. Police arrested six protestors who were handing out leaflets. Those arrested asserted their detention violated their first amendment rights; police claimed the demonstrators were protesting without a permit. Attorneys for the protestors cited case law bolstering the protestors’ case.
At one time a Chicago ordinance, MC8-4-010(i), had banned picketing near schools, but that ordinance has been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Police Department of Chicago, 408 U.S. 92 (1972), stating, “There is no building (public or private) that is so important that the City can ban picketing on its sidewalk.” In United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171 (1983), the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a statute banning expressive activities on the Supreme Court’s own sidewalk, Nissim-Sabat said.
This is not the first time an argument over freedom of speech has arisen in Chicago. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed several lawsuits in recent years to lift bans on protestors. After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the General Services Administration closed the Federal Plaza in Chicago to any kind of demonstration, citing unspecific terrorist concerns. They also refused to give a date when permits would be issued to use the plaza once more.
“The federal government bears a critical responsibility for protecting the ability of citizens with a host of viewpoints to gather and express their views on vital issues of these times,” said Harvey Grossman, legal director of the ACLU of Illinois. “But instead of acting to ensure that all voices are heard on the important issues of this time, federal officials have avoided this obligation, citing vague, nonspecific security concerns.”
The plaza was re-opened, but officials limited the number of permits issued for any given time. The ACLU filed another lawsuit to allow multiple permits to be issued for use at the same time; in 2002 U.S. District Court Judge Ruben Castillo approved a settlement under which the General Services Administration (the agency responsible for managing federal property, including Chicago’s federal buildings) must issue more than one permit for a given time if asked to do so. The settlement allows counterdemonstrators to voice their opinions even though someone else already has a permit for the plaza.
In 2003 a lawsuit was filed when officials banned a demonstrator from a McCormick Place Convention Center entrance.
Katherine Albrecht, a consumer rights advocate, wanted to express her objections to visitors to a technology convention about a privacy-invading technology known as radio frequency identification (RFID). Quentin Young, MD, former chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at Cook County Hospital, joined the lawsuit in 2004 when he was banned from expressing his views at the convention center during a healthcare convention. The lawsuit was settled in 2005, and now everyone can hand out leaflets at public entry and exit points at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center.
“The import of McCormick Place in the economic and political life of Chicago and the nation is obvious,” said Bill Gibbons of the Chicago office of Latham & Watkins, who assisted the ACLU in this litigation. “We are pleased that the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority has agreed to ensure leafleting outside all the public doors into McCormick Place, fostering critical discussion about important issues.”
