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Tune In, Turn Up, and Take It to the Great Lawn

The city says no PA system allowed, but what if tens of thousands showed up with portable radios, and broadcast live coverage of the RNC protest to a demonstrators on the Great Lawn

Now here’s a brilliant idea, courtesy of Prof. Sharon Gifford of the Rutgers University Department of Finance and Economics.



Noting that it’s completely legal for people in Central Park to play radios, as long as they aren’t turned up to excessive volume, she suggests that a clever strategy to challenge Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s outrageous banning of protest on the Great Lawn would be for thousands or tens of thousands of demonstrators on August 29 to head for the prohibited venue--as individuals--carrying radios which could all be tuned to a cooperative station (WBAI perhaps?) that could be covering the officially sanctioned but woefully sidelined West Side Highway rally.



If large numbers of park-goers were to simultaneously turn up their radios to the march, it would be the same—perhaps even better—than having a big PA system—and the police would have no legal way to respond.



I heard about a comical version of this idea put to work when the financially troubled Connecticut city of Willimantic, one recent July 4, was treated to a march by the local Windham High School marching band, sans instruments. Their program cancelled by budget cuts, the students dressed up in their marching uniforms but, instead of playing the instruments they were no longer getting instruction in, they all held up transistor radios tuned to martial music being broadcast by the local radio station. It was a creative and funny protest.



Now the ban on an anti-RNC demonstration in Central Park is no laughing matter. It is, in fact, one of the most egregious assaults yet on the First Amendment freedom of speech and assembly by a president who has made it official policy during his entire term of office to fence in and remove protesters from any public venue at which he is featured.



For the rest of this column, please go (at no charge) to This Can't Be Happening! .

 
 

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