Video: The WTTW News Spotlight Politics team on the DNC protest route and more of the day’s top stories. (Produced by Andrea Guthmann)
A coalition of groups planning to protest outside the United Center during the Democratic National Convention will not be allowed to march for two miles on major streets through the West Side, a federal judge ruled late Monday.
U.S. District Court Judge Andrea Wood ruled that the 1.4-mile march route that includes side streets proposed by Chicago officials was sufficient to ensure that the Coalition to March on the DNC, made up of more than 200 organizations, can protest while Democratic delegates gather to celebrate their nominee for president.
The approved route will send protestors west on Washington Boulevard, north at Hermitage Avenue before heading west on Maypole Avenue. The protest is set to stop at Park #578, at Maypole Avenue between Wolcott Avenue and Damen Avenue. The protest will be allowed to continue west on Maypole Avenue to Damen Avenue before heading north. At Lake Street, the march is set to turn east and return to Union Park, where the protest parade is set to end.
The protest route approved by U.S. District Court Judge Andrea Wood. (Provided)
“The court finds that the alternative parade route is narrowly tailored to address significant governmental interests and leaves open alternative channels of communication, as the First Amendment requires,” Wood wrote.
Both sides of the dispute are due in court Tuesday to resolve the remaining issues surrounding the planned protests, less than a week before the convention is set to start. Wood’s ruling can be appealed.
Representatives of the coalition said a longer march route was necessary to accommodate the tens of thousands of people set to protest the convention and prevent bottlenecks of people that could cause a public safety problem.
Hatem Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the coalition, said they were disappointed by Wood's ruling and vowed to fight it.
“We already won sight and sound, proving that the city attorneys were violating our First Amendment rights, but kept fighting to make certain that all the protesters we expect to head to Chicago next week are able to make their voices heard; if we’re forced on this route that Judge Wood approved, that won’t happen.”
The coalition’s preferred route would have eliminated two turns designed to move the protest away from Washington Boulevard, and extend the route further west, increasing its overall length by approximately one mile.
Officials with the U.S. Secret Service and the Chicago Police Department objected to that route because they said it could create a “crush zone” between protesters and the secure perimeter that is in the process of being installed along Washington Boulevard.
That barrier will be “between eight and ten feet high, non-scalable, and designed not to move or flex,” according to court records. Only credentialed members of the news media, convention delegates, employees and volunteers will be allowed past the barrier, officials said.
“Allowing the parade route to continue west on Washington Boulevard would create a ‘crush zone’ in which protestors and officers ‘would be at great risk of bodily injury or death if a crowd were to surge or press up against the barrier,’” Wood wrote, quoting Duane DeVries, CPD’s chief of counterterrorism.
Federal law allows officials to restrict protests otherwise protected by the First Amendment if the measures are reasonable and tailored to address plausible and substantial safety risks
“Plaintiffs claim that roughly 20,000 to 25,000 people will march in the protest parades,” Wood wrote. “Simply put, allowing a crowd of that size (or even a smaller one) to march directly alongside an unyielding barrier—no matter how much of the street is available for pedestrian use—poses an obvious risk of injury.”
In addition, allowing the protest march on Washington Boulevard could obstruct emergency access to and from the United Center, Wood wrote.
“Ultimately, plaintiffs’ challenges to the alternative parade route boil down to a complaint that defendants have not offered the exact route plaintiffs desire—despite their concession that the alternative parade route allows them to speak near their intended audience,” Wood wrote. “This falls well short of a First Amendment violation.”
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
