National Park Service withdraws proposal to make protesters pay for security
Source: Washington Post
The National Park Service announced Monday it is withdrawing a proposal that could have, among other things, made protesters repay the federal government for the cost of security at demonstrations. Opponents said the measure would have saddled protest organizers with enormous costs, crippling their ability to protest and exercise their rights under the Constitution.
The proposal would have affected gatherings on the Mall, President’s Park, around the White House and other federal land in the Washington area. “If someone called me to say, ‘I want to have a protest,’ and I said, ‘Cool, the Park Service is going to charge you $150,000 for security,’ they would hang up the phone,” Samantha Miller, an organizer with DC Action Lab, a company that helps plan demonstrations in Washington, said recently. “There are already a lot of preexisting fees that organizers get asked to pay. Add in something like a security fee, and there’s just no way most people or organizations would be able to afford it.”
The Park Service said in a statement it had received more than 140,000 comments about the proposal from the public and stakeholders. The agency’s August 2018 proposal was quickly met with opposition from those who feared it could curtail the public’s right to assemble in protest. “The National Mall and President’s Park are regarded as premier civic and symbolic spaces in our nation, and the volume and complexity of permit requests has increased dramatically over the years,” the Park Service said in its statement.
“After reviewing public comments on the proposed revisions, the [Park Service] has determined that the [old] regulations … will remain unchanged, and demonstrations and special events will continue to be managed according to the existing regulations.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/national-park-service-withdraws-proposal-to-make-protesters-pay-for-security/2019/10/28/41edeaa0-f988-11e9-8190-6be4deb56e01_story.html
That would have been like a First Amendment version of a "poll tax".
= new reply since forum marked as read
decorations!
red don stiffs local jurisdictions for providing security to cover his Nuremberg redux-meets-circle jerk MAGAt rallies, yet demonstrators exercising their Constitutional right to peaceably assemble and seek redress get saddled with enormous costs.
Glad red don hasn't wrecked the Park Service to that degree (yet).
