With a possibly tumultuous Republican National Convention rapidly approaching, the city of Cleveland and the American Civil Liberties Union reached a reasonable settlement on restricting protests last week. The agreement marks a better balance between law and order and freedom of expression than had been set by the city in its original security plan, which the ACLU successfully overturned in federal court as too restrictive.
The ACLU represented quite a disparate group of clients, from Citizens for Trump to Organize Ohio, which wants to protest economic and social inequality, to the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. The groups were united in rightly seeking to restore their First Amendment rights.
Key to the ACLU’s success was countering examples cited by the city of restrictions at recent conventions, going back to 2004. While security perimeters around convention halls are standard features of these events, Cleveland expanded the trend toward broader “event zones” designed to keep demonstrators far away from convention delegates, alternates and the many interested parties and guests.
The city first established an expansive, 3.5-square-mile event zone in downtown Cleveland and plotted an isolated parade route. Yet in each example the city cited in defense of its event zone, the zones were either smaller or didn’t exist at all. No other parade routes kept demonstrations so bottled up. At some recent conventions, parades were allowed to go right by the convention site.
The agreement now calls for an event zone about half the original size. In it, camping, legal weapons and relatively innocuous items such as coolers, rope and squirt guns will be banned. Homeless people living in the zone will be exempt. The parade route was extended and will end in a less isolated area of downtown. Parade times were relaxed slightly, although marches will not be allowed in the late afternoon, when most delegates typically begin to arrive.
The parade route will not pass directly by Quicken Loans Arena, where the nominating convention will take place.
As noted by Christine Link, the executive director of the ACLU of Ohio, national political conventions present “a unique stage” for all types of groups to reach a national audience and participate in what is proving this election year to be an especially robust debate.
Those attending the Republican convention in two weeks certainly deserve the security necessary to keep them from harm, starting with a perimeter around the convention site itself. Still, by plotting an event zone that covered so much of the downtown and establishing a parade route that would have largely confined marchers to the Lorain-Carnegie bridge, the city of Cleveland went too far.
Looking ahead, the settlement reached between the city and the ACLU should send an guiding signal to other cities that protecting the safety of those attending a national political convention does not mean crafting rules so severely they curb the rights of citizens to make their voices heard.