http://www.metrobeat.net/gbase/Expedite/Content?oid=oid%3A2248

America is a Free Speech Zone
Brett Bursey goes up against the Bush administration over what Americans
are allowed say

It wasn’t the first time Brett Bursey had been arrested, nor the first that
an act of civil disobedience landed him behind bars. In fact, he once
served two years for spray painting “Hell No We Won’t Go” on the walls of a
draft board office during the Vietnam War. But it was this arrest, the one
made during a visit by President George W. Bush on Oct. 24, 2002, to
Columbia, which just might prove to be the most significant of his life.

The matter at hand: what Americans are allowed to say and where they are
allowed to say it. For the Bush administration, the answer is simple: when
it comes to public appearances by the president, only those with something
nice to say get within earshot of Dubya. As for the dissenting rabble,
well, they get shuffled off to so-called free speech zones, sometimes
hundreds and hundreds of yards away from the president.

For Bursey, the answer is even simpler: America is a free speech zone. As
long as you are on public property, you can say whatever you want. Even if
the president doesn’t like it.

On that October day, sitting in the back of a paddy wagon, his hands cuffed
behind his back, Brett Bursey watched as Air Force One touched down at
Columbia Metropolitan Airport. Earlier, he had been holding a sign that
read, “No War for Oil,” outside of a rally at a hanger for then-candidates
Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Mark Sanford. President Bush was set to speak
in support of the two.

At the time, Bursey was the lone protester. Around him, hundreds and
hundreds of people who had come to cheer the commander in chief and his
Republican compatriots. The airport police approached Bursey and told him
he couldn’t stand next to the crowd with his sign. He went across the
street. The police again approached him. He was then told he couldn’t stand
on the state right-of-way across the street from the airport and protest.
According to Bursey, the police even went as far as to tell him that if he
put down his sign, the one that criticized Bush and his drive for war, he
could stay. If Bursey didn’t, he would have to go to a designated free
speech zone a half-mile away. He refused to move. Bursey was then arrested
and charged with trespassing.

However, he knew the charge wouldn’t stick. Some 30 years earlier he had
been arrested for protesting the president. Back then, the commander in
chief was Richard Nixon, but the charge was the same — trespassing.
Eventually, the state Supreme Court dropped the charges, ruling that
protesters such as Bursey could not legally trespass on public property.
Months after his October 2002 arrest, this new trespassing charge was
dropped by the state.

However, U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond, Jr., an inexperienced prosecutor of
little more than 30-years-of-age, filed federal charges against Bursey. The
new crime — refusing to leave a restricted area which had been declared the
temporary property of the president. This particular law was designed to
stop would-be assassins and kidnappers. Bursey is neither. He now faces six
months in jail and a $5,000 fine. The trial is set for November 12 in the
U.S. District Court in Columbia.

Bursey is not the only American who has been arrested for refusing to limit
the expression of his dissent to so-called free speech zones. The ACLU
recently filed a lawsuit against the federal government for violating the
free speech rights of protesters. Their claim: “Local police, acting at the
direction of the Secret Service, violated the rights of protesters in two
ways: people expressing views critical of the government were moved further
away from public officials while those with pro-government views were
allowed to remain closer; or everyone expressing a view was herded into
what is commonly known as a ‘protest zone,’ leaving those who merely
observe, but express no view, to remain closer.” According to the ACLU,
there have been over a “dozen examples of police censorship at events
around the country.”

To protest the use of free speech zones by the Bush administration to
squelch, or at least marginalize, dissent and to help publicize his own
battle against Uncle Sam, Bursey has taken to wearing a T-shirt emblazoned
with the phrase “Free Speech Zone” over an image of the United States.
Below that is “www.scpronet.com,” the Web address for the S.C. Progressive
Network, a coalition of activists and advocacy groups of which Bursey is
the director.

Recently, MetroBEAT interviewed Bursey about his fateful day at the
airport, his case and the ongoing war in Iraq.


Let’s just go through the events leading up to your arrest.

I had been in a line of... people that were there to hear the president
speak inside this hanger. Some of them were carrying signs for Sanford and
Graham. The event was a Republican rally for Republican candidates, the
primary Republican candidates being Lindsey Graham and Mark Sanford. So
there’s Sanford and Graham signs around, and I’m in line with these people.
There’s literally 4,000 people trying to get in this place. So I step out
of the flow onto this grassy strip along the side of the main road going
into the airport, and I am on the hanger side. As soon as I step out of
line, a policeman comes up and tells me I have to go to the free speech
zone. And I just ignore him. And I argue with him a little bit.


And you’re well aware of what the property lines are at this point and what
the rules are?

Yes.

So this woman, who I kept referring to as the “hysterical woman,” comes out
and starts screaming that I have to get out of there, I have to go to a
free speech zone. And she identifies herself as Secret Service. And I fall
back across the main road, moving further away from the hanger to the other
side of Airport Boulevard, so I’m still standing on the side of the road on
state right-of-way. And they follow me. They say, “You can’t be there. You
can’t be there.” And I say, “Well, I’ll go back that way,” and point at a
road that’s heading away from [where I’m standing] to Midlands Tech....
It’s a facility maybe a quarter of a mile down this road, and I point back
to Tech and say, “I’ll go back down there.” [They say,] “No, you can’t go
there. The only place you can go is the free speech zone.”

This woman, you can hear her buzzing in the background, “This is airport
property. Get me an airport policeman.” The airport police are the low man
on the totem pole. And [the Secret Service] say, “Arrest him.” And [the
police] say, “Arrest him for what?” “He’s trespassing.”

And now I’m talking to the arresting officer, and I say, “Is the problem
the content of my sign?” He had told me to put the sign down or leave or be
arrested. He gave me an option: If I put the sign down, I could still stand
there.


Thirty-four years ago, you were arrested at the Columbia Metropolitan
Airport during a visit by Richard Nixon. Did you go into this event knowing
that if you were arrested for trespassing, they would have to drop the
charges?

Well, no. I hadn’t even thought of it until I’m standing there and they’re
telling me they’re going to arrest me for trespassing and I’m basically
realizing, Oh my God, here I am again. I was literally a hundred yards from
the same location. It was part of that crystallization of that moment when
I knew that I had to tell them, “No.”


And what happened after that?

They put the cuffs on me. Behind my back. In a paddy wagon. And they moved
me behind the hanger where I could see Air Force One.


How was that?

That was really bizarre. Bush gets off the plane. And I can see the whole
tableau through the bars in the paddy wagon. He goes inside the hanger and
gives this speech where he says they hate us because we’re so free, and
here I am handcuffed in the back of a paddy wagon, thinking, “No, Mr. Bush
they don’t hate us because we’re free. They hate us because we’re
hypocrites.”


Do you think the Secret Service, perhaps under orders from someone in the
Bush administration, and I’m quoting a statement you made in a press
release, are trying to “to prevent the media from getting photos of people
protesting the president or to insulate the president from the reality that
all Americans don’t support his politics”?

That’s what I expect to prove. We have the evidence that the Secret Service
is ordering local police to do this. We have testimony from cops who have
used the term, “within eyeshot of the president.” [One officer testified
that] the “Secret Service ordered me... not to allow any protesters to be
within eyeshot.” Another cop says, “No protesters visible.” It’s clear that
the Secret Service is ordering local police to violate people’s rights. The
dots we have to connect is who told the Secret Service to do this.


What would prompt people within the Bush administration to say, the
president can’t see these protesters? What does the president have to fear?

Did I tell you what [Texas-based syndicated columnist] Molly Ivins’ take
was? She said they keep the protesters away from Bush because they’re
afraid he will go off on them. He’s hotheaded, and they don’t want to allow
a circumstance to allow Bush to show his ass in public. That’s one. Two,
and if you are the handlers and you have the power of God, if you are the
White House staff, you have a lot of power. If you give some guys this
power that are packaging the president, you’ll see things like flight suits
on aircraft carriers, incredible backdrops that cost billions of dollars.
It’s made-for-TV stuff. In that package of presenting Bush, given the power
that these people have, it’s not a stretch at all to think that somebody in
the White House advance [team] has just incorporated the Secret Service
into their function.... [It] could be some lower level minion in the PR
staff in the White House that’s actually being able to use the Secret
Service to make sure there are no protesters in any frame of picture taken
of the president.

What’s the status of the case at the moment?

We are expecting the judge to turn over Secret Service documents by Oct. 24
that he ordered the government to produce. [Note: these documents concern
communications between the Secret Service and local law enforcement in
regards to presidential visits.] The judge had a secret meeting with the
Secret Service to hear their concerns about presidential security and
decided that he would give us all but three documents. We are having a hard
time arguing for their release, as we don’t know what they say. We doubt
that the documents are going to spell out that the Secret Service is
ordering local police to violate citizens’ First Amendment rights.... We
are planning on issuing a subpoena for the White House Secret Service
Liaison. We can prove that the Secret Service is routinely using the excuse
of the president’s physical security to protect his political security. We
intend to prove that these orders came from the White House.

The trial is scheduled to begin 9:30 a.m., November 12 in the new U.S.
District Courthouse in Columbia. I encourage anyone concerned about the
restrictions being placed on constitutional rights to be in the courtroom
with me.

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