The Assault on Civil Liberties.

It's open season on civil liberties. First in Seattle during the World Trade Organization protests last November 30 through December 3, then in Washington, D.C., during the IMF-World Bank actions in mid-April, then in Detroit during demonstrations against the Organization of American States in early June, city governments and police departments have trampled all over our First Amendment rights of speech and assembly.

Now this summer, with the political conventions upon us, the powers of the state are once again preparing to interfere with our rights.

In Philadelphia, for the Republican convention, they've passed an ordinance that prohibits people from wearing masks, and they've made whole sections of the city off-limits to protests. Los Angeles, site of the Democratic convention, is also planning on restricting access to the streets.

Such infringements should be anathema to every American who reveres the First Amendment.

For law enforcement and elected officials, Seattle was an object lesson in the need to prepare for protests--and to crack down, regardless of the Constitution. Caught off guard by a handful of anarchists, the city overreacted wildly. It imposed a "no protest zone" across a twenty-five block area for three days, which in itself was against the law.

"First Amendment activity may not be banned simply because prior similar activity led to or involved instances of violence," the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1997 in Collins vs. Jordan. "The proper response to potential and actual violence is for the government to ensure an adequate police presence and to arrest those who actually engage in such conduct, rather than to suppress legitimate First Amendment conduct as a prophylactic measure."

But that's just what the city did. And in so doing, it violated the rights of nonviolent protesters there.

The ACLU is suing the city of Seattle on behalf of six clients who were at the WTO protest. One of them, Todd Stedl, was distributing copies of the First Amendment near the boundary of the "no protest zone" when a police officer took the leaflets away and searched his bag without his consent, according to the lawsuit.

Another plaintiff, Doug Skove, was carrying a sign that said "I Have a Right to Nonviolent Protest." The police snatched it away, the suit says.

Two other plaintiffs had to remove buttons or stickers affixed to their clothing. Another had his sign ripped up.

And the sixth plaintiff, Victor Menotti, affiliated with the International Forum on Globalization, was arrested after coming out of a meeting with White House officials and addressing a crowd.

This isn't the only suit pending against the city of Seattle. "There have been about sixty individual suits," says Paul Richmond, a board member of the Seattle chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. "The Guild is in the process of exploring the possibility of more sweeping class suits dealing with the issues of militarization and the use of force." (For a copy of the Guild's draft report on police misconduct during the protests, go to its web site at www.infosubway.org/ infosubway/wto_report.)

Seeing the chaos in Seattle, the D.C. police prepared for a showdown and pulled out the stops. As Terry J. Allen reported for In These Times on May 29, "Law enforcement agents surveilled activists, infiltrated meetings disguised as participants, conducted a mass arrest of more than 600 nonviolent marchers and bystanders, mistreated people in custody, confiscated First Amendment-protected literature, violated a contract with protesters' lawyers, and used the fire department--thereby avoiding the need for a warrant--to search and then shut down the organizing headquarters."

The national capital chapter of the ACLU is working with other lawyers on the city's alleged civil rights violations and says a lawsuit will be filed.

Next up was Detroit. In the days right before the OAS protests, the Detroit city council voted to "temporarily prohibit demonstrators from wearing gas masks and hoods," the Detroit Free Press reported.

"Several demonstrators were charged with wearing masks, including a high school civics teacher who wore a blue helmet to protest police abuse," wrote Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU in Michigan, in a commentary entitled "Democracy Vanished in Detroit as Nonviolent Protest Restricted," which ran in the Free Press. "One student had the film from his camera taken away after he photographed a police officer. And one man was ordered not to take photographs of another police interrogation occurring on the street, and to produce identification when he refused. The officer relented when he found out that he had stopped the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union." Police also pepper-sprayed protesters for the crime of hanging a banner on a fence, the Free Press reported.

For the upcoming conventions, civil rights protections are low on the priority list for the police. "At both the GOP event and the Democratic convention in Los Angeles two weeks later, the Secret Service is coordinating the work of dozens of federal, state, and local agencies employing thousands of officers--some of whom will be dressed like tourists to mix with their surroundings," the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The City of Brotherly Love has established a 7,600-square-foot "free speech zone," which raises the question of what the rest of the city will become: a nofree-speech zone?

The FBI is regularly reading the Internet listservs of the protest groups, the Inquirer also reported. "Emails are like leads," Thomas Harrington, the assistant special agent-in-charge in the FBI's Philadelphia office, told the Inquirer. "We've had a lot of experience with them."

Following Detroit's lead, Philadelphia has just outlawed the wearing of a "mask, hood, or other device hiding, concealing, or covering any portion of the face for the purpose of concealing their identity on public property or private property in this city without the express written permission of the owner or occupier of the property." Happy Halloween.

In Los Angeles for the Democratic Convention in August, "the police have proposed putting demonstrators in a fenced-off parking lot near the convention site," according to The New York Times.

Political conventions are supposed to represent the flowering of our political system. But, as with the trade meetings, what we may be seeing is the wilting of democracy instead.

While we're on the subject of civil liberties violations, we would be remiss not to remark on one of the worst--and least discussed--Supreme Court decisions of the term just ended. Many progressives may support the decision, because it upheld a "no-approach" zone outside medical offices, and abortion rights activists want as little interference as possible in a woman's ability to get to her appointments. While we appreciate the need to ensure a woman's safety while entering a clinic to obtain an abortion, there are plenty of laws on the books to do that. But this law does not deal with violence; it deals with speech.

The case is Hill v. Colorado, and the question before the court was whether a 1993 Colorado statute regulating speech within 100 feet of the entrance to health care facilities is constitutional. The Colorado law said it was illegal, on public property, to get closer than eight feet to any person, without that person's consent, "for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with such other person."

The Supreme Court, in a 6-to-3 decision written by Justice John Paul Stevens, upheld the law, saying that "the Colorado statute reflects an acceptable balance between the constitutionally protected rights of law-abiding speakers and the interests of unwilling listeners." Here, Stevens and the Court elevate a nonexistent right ("the interests of unwilling listeners") to the same plane as the enshrined First Amendment right of free speech. Stevens makes a big deal about the "significant difference between state restrictions on a speaker's right to address a willing audience and those that protect listeners from unwanted communication."

But protecting "unwanted communication" is not the government's role. It grossly interferes with the right of citizens to converse with, debate, persuade, cajole or otherwise try to change the minds of other citizens. The Court's decision thus intrudes on an essential civil liberty and shows a lack of faith in the central rationale of free speech--that, over time, in the free marketplace of ideas, good speech will triumph over bad speech, and the truth will out. If "unwanted communication" is restricted, then so, too, is the ability to contest bad ideas, since the holder of those bad ideas is not likely to want to be bothered by someone else who might challenge those ideas.

The Supreme Court in Hill v. Colorado has no patience for that process. Instead, it grants to the government the right to impede someone's speech and to protect the "unwilling" listener. Such power is a censor's dream.

This decision is a thinly veiled discrimination against the content of a specific kind of speech, namely anti-abortion attitudes. No matter where you come out on the question of abortion--and we are firmly pro-choice--you cannot claim that anti-abortion activists don't have the same free speech rights as pro-choicers. The statute in Colorado was clearly aimed at the anti-abortion crowd. It mentioned that it had in mind "the right to protest or counsel against certain medical procedures." (Wonder what those could be.)

The Supreme Court has long held that content-based laws against speech have to pass the strictest scrutiny to be legal. But the Court in this case said the Colorado statute wasn't about the content of speech but about time, place, and manner of speech, which can be weighed against other compelling state interests.

Even under time, place, and manner restrictions, the eight-foot rule is overbroad. How is it possible to effectively engage in leafleting from such a distance? Anyone who has ever leafleted will instantly recognize the harm done by such a law.

The Court claimed that people entering and exiting health care facilities deserve more protection from "unwanted" speech because of the personal, private, and often painful decisions that have to be made there. But it's not up to the Court to decide where some speech is less painful to be heard than others. What's next? No picketing within 100 feet of a cemetery, church, or a Little League game?

The precedent the Court has now set is a pernicious one. Since the public sidewalks outside health care facilities are now protected zones, you can be arrested in Colorado for approaching someone (unless you've gotten that person's consent!) in all of the following circumstances:

* You suspect the health care facility is practicing euthanasia, and you leaflet on the sidewalk ninety-nine feet away.

* The health care facility is conducting cruel experiments on animals, and you go up and urge everyone there to stop doing so.

* The doctors at a V.A. hospital are providing substandard care, and you draw attention to that by handing people leaflets.

* The medical facility is refusing to care for the indigent, and you approach the employees as they come to work and give them a handout that explains your views.

* You oppose managed care and want to advocate for a single-payer system, and you are trying to get a petition going outside a private hospital or health maintenance organization.

* The nurses at a hospital are on strike, and you, as a member of the union, leaflet fellow citizens passing by, as well as employees of the hospital who are going in and out.

* The police have savagely beaten up an innocent bystander, who is being treated at the hospital, and you hand out leaflets to everyone there about the scandal of police brutality.

* An obstetrician who does abortions rents a floor in a large office complex. In the same complex, the Army has set up a recruiting office. You start handing out leaflets about the wastefulness of Pentagon spending, the harshness of Army training, and the ugly record of U.S. interventions overseas.

This list of hypotheticals, which we drew up in just a moment's reflection, shows how sweeping the consequences of the Court's decision could be. The slope is not just slippery. It is treacherous.

Freedom of speech and of assembly lie at the heart of our political system. And when the political parties, the local governments, the police chiefs, and the Supreme Court all assault these freedoms, the lifeblood of democracy gets clogged, and the health of our society is imperiled.