2 parties halted over picket threats

[Justice]

City convention organizers have canceled two of Mayor Thomas M. Menino's signature convention welcoming parties because delegations from Ohio and Michigan are refusing to cross threatened police picket lines at the events, even with a police union contract set to be announced today.

Several state delegations -- including California, the nation's largest -- have pledged to stay away from parties where police are picketing, and Menino said that as soon as today's contract is announced, he will personally call delegations, asking them to attend.

I bet you the Boston Patrolman's Union endorses Bush after the convention. Who wants to bet?

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/conventions/articles/2004/07/22/2_parties_halted_over_picket_threats/

[Spangle]

1. Maybe

The NYPD will be nicer to democratic protesters during the Republican convention??? <grin>

[Warpy]

2. Boston fuzz have traditionally been pubbies.

probably as a reaction to having to deal with arrogant college brats for hundreds of years in that city. They'll go for whatever fascists they can find, anybody who will give them permission to act like thugs against overprivileged snots who will someday be in a position to boss them around.

[IndianaGreen]

3. And on a related note having to do with the right to protest...

Protest zone draws ire

Court to be asked to rule on use of high barriers and netting
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | July 21, 2004

Cement barriers, 8-foot-tall chain-link fencing, and heavy black netting have been installed around the protest zone outside the FleetCenter, angering protesters who say they will be penned in and closed off from Democratic National Convention delegates.

Much of the area is located under abandoned elevated Green Line tracks that slope downward. The setup, which one netting installer called ''an internment camp," will force tall protesters at the southern end of the zone to lower their heads to avoid banging them on green metal girders.

Furious that protesters are being shoehorned into an enclosed space, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild said they will ask a federal judge to open up or move the zone.

''We were given every assurance that there would be an adequate space for people to assemble for purposes of protest that is within sight and sound of the convention and the delegates," said John Reinstein, an ACLU lawyer representing activists planning to protest at the convention. ``This is neither. . . . It's a pen."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/07/21/protest_zone_draws_ire/