Muzzled on the campaign trail

Progressive, The, Nov, 2004 by Matthew Rothschild

When some anti-war activists from Lanster, Pennsylvania, heard that President Bush and his motorcade would be coming through nearby Smoketown on the afternoon of July 9, they decided to plan an unusual protest. Rather than carrying the usual signs, they opted for street theater of a novel kind. They decided to replicate the human pyramid at Abu Ghraib: the stacking of naked Iraqi prisoners.

"We thought it would be an effective way to show our revulsion about the war," says Tristan Egolf. "We took a specific photo of the Abu Ghraib scandal, and we planned to arrange ourselves exactly as in the photo."

Egolf and seven others waited for the Bush motorcade by the side of Old Philadelphia Pike. Bush supporters far outnumbered them, he says.

Shortly before 3 p.m., Egolf's group heard cheers. Thinking that the motorcade was approaching, they stripped down to their underwear and got in position.

A woman with the group pretended to be a U.S. soldier mocking the faux prisoners.

The reaction from the Bush supporters was immediate, says Egolf.

"They called us scumbags and faggots," he says. "One guy came up to us and said, 'I don't care how many people we have to kill as long as my gasoline prices are lower.'"

After a couple of minutes, "the police came in and started pulling us apart," Egolf says. They handcuffed six of the seven men, without reading them their rights or charging them with anything, according to Egolf and three of the others.

"They took us down a bank and out of view of the crowd and put us down in a ditch," Egolf says. They stayed there until the Bush motorcade was well out of town, and then the police took them down to the East Lampeter Township station.

There, they were given tickets for disorderly conduct and released after about three hours.

Ben Keely was one of those arrested. "I was roughed up a little bit," he says, explaining that the handcuffs were too tight on him. "My left hand was numb for about three days afterwards."

Keely views street theater as an important way to get a message out. "Holding signs doesn't always get the point across," he says. "We want to make people aware of what's going on in the world around us."

Egolf agrees: "It was an obscene spectacle we did in the name of common decency." But, he is quick to add, "it wasn't an act of public indecency; there was no anatomy displayed."

The police evidently were looking to pin an obscenity or indecent exposure charge on the protesters.

"I heard one of the state cops going up and down the line asking pro-Bush people if they had photos that would show the protesters' genitalia, because it 'would be easier to charge them,'" recalls Van Gosse, a professor at Franklin and Marshall College and a member of the Lancaster Peace and Justice Coalition.

The protesters believe their civil liberties were trampled on. "It's a pretty clear-cut Bill of Rights violation," Egolf says.

The Pennsylvania chapter of the ACLU agrees.

"Street theater is a constitutionally protected form of expression," says Vic Walczak, litigation director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which is assisting the protesters. "As long as they're not blocking traffic, they have every right to engage in this venerable and creative form of protest."

Lieutenant Jim Ely of the East Lampeter Township Police Department says, "I'm sorry, we're not going to comment."

All six of the protesters pleaded not guilty on July 19.

Once their criminal case is disposed of, they say they are planning on suing the police.

The arrest of the Pennsylvania Abu Ghraib protesters is just one example of a startling number of repressive actions during this campaign season. From requiring affidavits of people attending Bush rallies to penning protesters in "free speech zones" to arresting almost 2,000 people at the Republican National Convention, the muzzling is distinctly un-American. In this article, I focus on a few cases of people who were actually arrested simply for engaging in obviously protected free speech activities.

"The fact that government agents are now making judgment calls based on a person's political viewpoint or the presence of a T-shirt or campaign button that is critical of the President is completely antithetical to an open society," says Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. The ACLU has sued the Secret Service over its policy of penning people into free speech zones and discriminating against protesters based on the content of their speech. "The Secret Service has a responsibility to protect the President from harm," Romero says, "but it should not try to protect him from criticism."

The Kerry campaign has not been blameless. At the Democratic Convention in Boston, the organizers would not allow unapproved signs on the floor, and when people tried to hoist their smuggled signs, they were surrounded by Kerry supporters. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, was hauled off the convention floor for unveiling a banner that said, "End the Occupation of Iraq."

But by far, most of the stories I've come across have had to do with the Republicans. "All of the arrests that I know of are in connection with Bush and Cheney events," says Chris Hansen, a staff attorney with the ACLU, though he acknowledges that the Kerry campaign has excluded critics from some events. The infringements during this campaign "are more common than ever," he says.