RNC Protest Rule Change Touted as Victory for Homeless, Free Speech
Back in April, when Tim Selaty applied for a permit to protest during the upcoming Republican National Convention in Cleveland, he did so imagining himself and legions of Trump-faithful raging against a party that had betrayed them. “We thought the RNC was trying to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump,” Selaty says.
As that fear gradually subsided, Selaty and his group, Citizens for Trump, rebranded their event as a celebration of the presumptive Republican nominee. The “America First Unity Rally” he envisioned would take place on a pier in Lake Erie — which, he says, would make it easier to keep the riff-raff out of this unity rally. “It was one way in, one way out. We could secure VIP people, we could have boats and yachts come up on the side, plus it was way away from the hubbub of Mr. Trump’s detractors,” Selaty says.
In the end, though, all his preparation was for naught, because the City of Cleveland denied Citizens for Trump’s application. The group wasn’t alone: Officials also rejected the progressive group Organize Ohio’s request to hold a “March to End Poverty” on the city’s impoverished east side during the convention.
On Wednesday, Cleveland was forced to adopt new terms accommodating both groups, as well as more than 100 homeless individuals living within the city-designated “event zone.” A judge last week ruled Cleveland’s original security proposal was too draconian, even as lawyers for the Republican Party warned any last-minute changes could make it “impossible to fully account for the changed circumstances and protect the safety and security” of those attending the GOP convention.
Some 50,000 people — delegates, party officials, journalists, lobbyists — are expected to descend on Cleveland in July, and dozens of groups, from Code Pink to the Westboro Baptist Church, have applied for permits to protest the event. In preparation for the Republican Party’s week-long occupation of their city, in May Cleveland officials proposed strict restrictions on movement and speech in a huge swath of the downtown area.
They proposed the largest-ever security perimeter for a national political convention: 3.3 square miles. By comparison, there was effectively no security perimeter outside the 2004 RNC in New York City, and just a 0.16-square-mile “vehicle restriction zone” in St. Paul in 2008. Tampa, in 2012, had a 2.7-mile event zone that was similar, but still smaller, than the one proposed in Cleveland.
Under the new rules, large gatherings like the type Citizens for Trump wanted to have were forbidden in the event zone without express permission, and parades like the one Organize Ohio wished to hold could only happen on a designated route — most of which was over a bridge, out of sight and earshot of anyone other than the marchers themselves.