USA TODAY FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1985

Capital Park Dispute

Free Speech or Eyesore?
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    • By Leslie Phillips
    USA TODAY

    The cluttered landscape of Washington's Lafayette:Park provides: a haven for protester and their causes - and a visual black eye for lots of residents and tourists, Concepcion Picciotto, who lives between placards emblazoned with mushroom clouds, says new restrictions proposed by the Reagan administration violate the Constitution.

    "You can say a requiem for the First Amendment," she said Thursday from the park, located across from the White House. "I think it's very unfair."

    The American Civil Liberties Union says if the new regulations go into effect unchanged, it will sue.

    But for Joseph Plock, a bank officer, who passes the demonstrators on his lunch hour, the proposed rules don't go far enough.

    "I think they (the signs) should all be ripped down," he fumed. "It's litter."

    From a 12-foot-high proclamation opposing the bomb to a "Stop the Arms Race Now" message in seven languages, about two dozen signs border the White House side of the park.

    Among the main changes, which are subject to a 60-day period of public comment: Each protester would be limited to two signs no larger than 4 feet by 4 feet and they would have to stay within three feet of their signs.

    "We've had everything down there from desks to make-shift toilets," says Park Service spokeswoman Sandra Alley.

    Nevertheless, it's a curiosity for tourists.

    Concludes 15-year-old Ivan Austin of England: "If I was the president, I wouldn't like it much."

    (picture: SIGNBOARD PROTESTS: placards line Lafayette Park across from the White House. photo by Lee Anderson

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    In case you're looking for us (White House Peace Vigil - Peace Park anti-nuclear vigil - and friends) our signs have been moved across Lafayette Park to H Street, as has happened every four years since the vigil began in June, 1981.

    Meanwhile a dozen large mobile homes rest on the grass of the southern half of Lafayette Park for the construction crews' comfort. Police patrol regularly, in part to make sure no homeless people crawl under the empty trailers in the icy dark of night. The bricks where office workers and tourists usually walk have been torn up, and huge - ugly - three-story bleachers rise in the space where our vigil normally stands, along the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue, so the press -- for one afternoon -- may stay warm and dry and near bathrooms while President Clinton has his second inaugural parade. The bathrooms on the north side of the park are locked, though construction workers again (as in past years) have for their use several porta-johns which are locked at night. Fences of every variety are intricately laid out to block demonstrators into the northeast corner of the park during the Big Event.

    Ronald Reagan tried to have a second inaugural parade but it was so cold Inauguration Day 1985, the president had to call it off, and the quarter-million-dollar bleachers went unused. We were shivering and dancing in the northeast quadrant of the park, giving credit to God for a good sense of humor.

    The vigil began five months after Reagan's first inauguration. At that time, people were allowed to demonstrate on the White House sidewalk. After a campaign by the Washington Times in 1983, new regulations were written banishing the vigil to Lafayette Park. During the wee hours of the morning, when tourists weren't about, police hovered and often arrested the vigilers. Department of Interior lawyers wrote a "camping" regulation which was used to criminalize (see CCNV case, U.S. Supreme Court, 1984) what was formerly protected behavior (see Abney case, U.S. Court of Appeals, 1976).

    Since there are private citizens who insist on paying for this desecration of Lafayette Park every four years (via the Inaugural Committee), we're stuck with the bleachers again this year. So I'm writing President Clinton asking him, as I asked President Reagan in 1985, at least to leave the bleachers up for the rest of the winter, for homeless people to get out of the cold, wet, snowy, icy streets. I'm not asking for us -- we will remain at our signs with the minimal amount of protection necessary to survive. We are asking on behalf of the homeless sleeping on the DC streets (in spite of police harassment) ... still, after all these years.

    Ellen Thomas
    PEACE PARK ANTINUCLEAR VIGIL
    PO Box 27217, Washington, DC 20038 USA
    202-462-0757
    prop1@prop1.org

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