First, when did the Secret Service start creating ‘free speech zones’ during Presidential appearances? I have the general impression it was not long after the 2000 Republican convention, but I would appeciate clarification. I would be interested to learn if this predates Bush, and just the terminology is new.
Secondly, it appears the term itself orginated with colleges attempting to control student protests - there are plenty of online references to such in the mid-'90’s, but I would be curious as to the first actual usage. I’m suspecting a campus during the '60’s, but I have been unable to find much info.
Was doing a search on this myself, wondering the same question as the OP.
Seems like noone knew when barton asked the first time. Maybe someone knows now?
President Reagan came to Duke University in the mid-80’s while I was there, and the protesters were placed behind a barrier, but well within sight and sound of the entourage.
Well, i did a Lexis/Nexis search among major newspapers for the term “free speech zone,” covering all available dates. I got a total of 165 hits.
Some of the hits had nothing to do with the subject at hand. For example, some of the earliest references to “free speech zones” involved a 1989 debate over freedom of speech on the campus of Tufts University. The issue involved speech that the university declared to be sexist. The university and the student representative body passed what was essentially an anti-hate speech rule, and some groups protested that this was a first amendment violation.
The first reference i found to “free speech zone” in the context described by the OP was in a bunch of stories coving the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996. Here are a few snippets i’ve cut from the articles. I can’t provide links, because Lexis/Nexis is a paid subscription service.
and
According to the Houston Chronicle, however, such free speech zones extend considerably further back than 1996.
So, there you have it. The Chronicle article suggests that the creation of the “free speech zones” was largely in response to violence at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. But if they were to take any lessons from Chicago, it should have been that the best way to avoid unnecessary violence is to keep the cops away.
I should add, i guess, that the issue of special zones around national conventions is somewhat different than the zones that the OP is asking about, which recently seem to be set up for just about any Presidential appearance.
For the most part, the zones around the national conventions apply to any people who are not part of the convention, and yet who want to make their voices heard. This applies, at least in principle, to both opponents and supporters of the party in question.
The free speech zones at Bush’s appearances, however, have been set up purely for the purpose of keeping opponents away from the President. Supporters of Bush, carrying similar signs and wearing similar t-shirts, have not been herded into these zones.
I don’t know whether this happened under any other Presidents or not, but Lexis/Nexis reveals no similar instances in the pre-Bush era.
I think it came at the heels of the RICO ruling in the abortion protest SCOTUS decision. It seems that folks are taking that ruling and applying to non-RICO type situations.
Another data point: Restricted areas for protesters got a big boost during the WTO rioting here in Seattle in November and December of 1999. It was a serious pain in the ass to have a job downtown and be limited only to certain routes walking around because the police had cordoned off otherwise public streets in order to control the demonstrators. There was a legal challenge to the concept of “protest in this public space = OK, protest in that public space = Not OK,” but it ended rather ambiguously as I recall.
(I guessed this was related to the “Free Speech Movement”, and this turned up.)
Even though I started college in 1968, I don’t remember anything about a “free speech area”. But that’s probably because my school was not a hotbed of protest.
Following are the earliest references I could find from Proquest Newspapers. The references are matter-of-fact, so I infer the idea was well-established at the time.
<aside>“Heated” verbal exchange after a fire? The author had an interesting sense of humor.</aside>
A similar article: 1988 Democratic National Convention Police Bar 2 Klan-Style Rallies; [Home Edition]
DAVID TREADWELL, HENRY WEINSTEIN. Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext). Los Angeles, Calif.: Jul 18, 1988. pg 5.
That’s fascinating. From the examples mentioned, it sounds like “free speech area” generally designated a semi-permanent public area where people could go and speak; designating it with this name would attract interested people to participate. It did not imply that other areas were off-limits to public speaking. But the current usage of “free speech zone” is more of an attempt to deflect attention from the fact that everywhere outside of the “zone” is really a “prohibited speech zone.”
I was at the 1996 Republican convention (well, not IN the convention, but we were in the area at the time and we decided to go to the area… there were lots of vendors and booths and the like).
The entire area was fenced with a chain link fence (but awfully big links, and the fence did not look recently constructed). There was only one protestor, behind a chain link fence but well within the sight of the RNC and throwing distance of the other attendees. He was so visible and so close to the rest of the attendees that I never got the impression that he was “forced” there.
This is a WAG but I’ll bet that protestors have been shuffled into different locations for a while, but what is different about these “free speech zones” is that the protestors are now shuffled out of sight .