Convention Protesters Get a Jump

A contradiction lies at the heart of the quadrennial presidential-nominating conventions. These most grand celebrations of the democratic process are, in fact, private affairs, organized for club members of the political parties, not the general public. The best after-hours events are thrown for corporate sponsors and high-dollar donors, not voters, and the best hotel rooms are saved for official delegates from key swing states. The general public is not welcome too near the convention halls, let alone on the convention floors.

If you are just a regular voter belonging to the very group that John McCain so desperately wants to impress, about as close as you can come to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., this September will be a triangle of pavement about 84 feet from the Xcel Energy Center, the sports arena where McCain plans to accept the nomination. Non-credentialed citizens at the Democratic convention in Denver will be directed to a fenced-in portion of "Parking Lot A" several football-field lengths away from the Pepsi Center, where the party will produce a late-August teleplay in honor of Barack Obama.

Civil rights attorneys in both cities have filed motions in federal court arguing that the announced arrangements fall far short of what the Constitution requires. "The Constitution commands the government to treat peaceful expressions of dissent with the greatest respect — respect equal to that of the invited delegates," ruled U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock in 2004, in response to outcry over the arrangements for protesters at the Democratic convention in Boston. At the time, the zone for protesters — a cordoned-off area under an abandoned railroad track topped by razor wire — was widely seen as affront to the spirit of free expression, but the court finally ruled that protesters had filed their objections too late to make changes to the security plan.

This time around, the groups organizing massive protests in St. Paul and Denver are making sure to avoid the same mistakes. "We learned something from Boston," says Meredith Aby, 35, a public-school teacher who is helping to organize the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War protest in St. Paul. "The people in Boston said you need to start your legal process early and you need to make your struggle very early."

Later this week, U.S. District Court Judge Joan Ericksen in Minneapolis plans to rule on a petition to expand the march time and route for protesters at the Republican Convention. In Denver, U.S. District Court Judge Marcia S. Krieger will hold a hearing on July 29 to review the march routes and public demonstration areas that have been permitted for the city.

Similar objections run through the legal filings in both cities. Both St. Paul and Denver have announced plans to restrict marches to certain hours during the middle of the day, before delegates are likely to arrive at the convention halls. "The question is whether we are going to be marching to an empty building," says Bob Hennessey, an attorney at Linquist and Vennum, who is representing the St. Paul coalition.

Both cities are also grappling with the establishment of a permanent public demonstration area that is both large enough and close enough to the delegates so that protesters can be seen and heard. "We are very upset by it," says Glenn Spagnuolo, 37, a law student who is helping to organize Recreate '68, a group that plans to march on the Democratic convention, calling for an immediate end to the Iraq war, among other issues. "The [Denver] mayor guaranteed that we would be in sight and sound of the delegates at the convention, neither of which he has provided."

Under current plans, the arrangements for protesters in St. Paul appear to provide protesters with closer access to the entrance of the convention hall than in Denver, where the arena is buffered from the protest area by hundreds of meters of parking lots, some of which may be filled with media trailers. "People will be considerably closer in St. Paul," says Mark Silverstein, an attorney with the Colorado ACLU who is helping to lead the litigation there.

But attorneys in St. Paul have also raised concerns about their protest area, which is set to line a city street, culminating in a triangular space facing the convention hall. While the tip of the triangle is close to the arena, the design of the space risks a possible crush of people vying for the same space, say advocates for the protesters. "What if you have different groups with different political aims and desires?" asks Chris Sur, an attorney with the Maslon law firm who is representing protesters in negotiations with the city. "What if they are all fighting for one access point?"

It's difficult to predict the size of protest crowds, but organizers in both St. Paul and Denver expect as many as 50,000 to protest at each of the conventions, with specific marches spread out over several days. The Democratic convention will be held from Aug. 25-28, while the Republican convention is scheduled for Sept. 1-4, with a major march planned for the first day of the event, Labor Day.

The Obama campaign's recent decision to hold his convention speech in a separate football stadium, the 76,000-seat Invesco Field at Mile High, has created a new set of questions about protests on the final night in Denver. Convention organizers have not yet announced the procedures for ticketing the public for the event, though they say they hope to open the doors to at least some members of the public. "We do want to give some sort of preference to the local folks," said Natalie Wyeth, a spokeswoman for the Democratic convention. "We're working through those details now."

Spagnuolo says he expects that protesters will attempt to convene at Invesco Field as well, though he does not know of specific plans to disrupt the event itself. But with just weeks remaining before Denver hosts the Democrats, he says the behavior of the Democratic mayor's office has called into question the party's election-year message. "They want to look like they are the party of the people," Spagnoulo says. "And they don't want the public to see these protests."