A battle over how close protesters can get to the Democratic National Convention returned to court Monday afternoon, pitting a coalition of groups seeking to march on the United Center against the city who said it must set limits to ensure safety and access.
"I wanted to make the political point that these city attorneys blindsided us. That they claim they are negotiating in good faith and they are not," said Hatem Abuudayyeh of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network.
A major issue for the protest groups: the route of any march from Union Park to the United Center. They want to take Washington Boulevard all the way. The city wants to route them onto side streets around the Secret Service security fencing likely to group on Washington.
City attorneys argued before a federal judge that the protesters have already won what they had been seeking.
"We are offering a site within sight and sound [of the United Center], and that's what the First Amendment calls for," attorney Andrew Worseck said. "The things the plaintiffs want us to do are simply not workable."
The city intends to put up a stage and a sound system at park number 578 about a block from the United Center. That too is causing controversy for the protest groups who object to other groups being able to use the equipment when they have been negotiating with the city for months.
"This was the city, in my opinion, operating in extreme bad faith by really using this as a punitive thing," said attorney Chris Williams, who represents the coalition, which includes Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Anti-War Coalition, Students for a Democratic Society at UIC and the United States Palestinian Community Network.
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An estimated 20,000 to 25,000 protesters are expected at the DNC, thousands more than materialized at the RNC in Milwaukee. The protest groups say people will be denied their First Amendment right unless the march route is expanded from a little more than a mile to more than two miles.
"We are not going to accept 'take it or leave it' again. We are going to fight, and we are going to continue to pressure the city of Chicago to give us this route, because it's in the best interest of the tens of thousands of protesters and it's in the best interests of the city," said Abuudayyeh.
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After two hours of arguments, Federal Judge Andrea Wood made no decisions Monday, saying she will make her ruling before the convention begins two weeks from now.
