Rights of Protesters
Political advocates outside of the major parties have complained that both the Democratic and Republican conventions have violated their First Amendment rights to demonstrate, protest and advocate their ideas. Both conventions have restricted protesters to demonstrating in "free speech zones" of fenced-in areas, sometimes surrounded by barbed wire, and not accessible to the delegates. Civil rights lawyers have complained that police indiscriminately arrest demonstrators and charge them with crimes even though they are not breaking the law. In New York 2004, police arrested people and testified under oath that the arrestees had been committing violent acts. Videotapes by bystanders and the New York City police themselves later contradicted that testimony, and showed that at least some arrestees had not been violent. The City has settled lawsuits for false arrest. In 2008, St. Paul required the RNC to buy liability insurance to cover the police for legal fees and judgments arising from legal complaints by protesters. Currently, protest groups organizing against the 2012 RNC, such as resistRNC, believe special security event ordinances escalate and even create the violence it claims to prevent.
Read more about this topic: Republican National Convention
Famous quotes containing the words rights of, rights and/or protesters:
“Rights! There are no rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look at the history of the growth of our constitution, and you will see that our ancestors never upon any occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves; you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“I wish the women’s rights folks would be more sensible. I think women have a great deal to learn, before they are fit to vote.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“Now, honestly: if a large group of ... demonstrators blocked the entrances to St. Patrick’s Cathedral every Sunday for years, making it impossible for worshipers to get inside the church without someone escorting them through screaming crowds, wouldn’t some judge rule that those protesters could keep protesting, but behind police lines and out of the doorways?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)