UNCIVIL LIBERTIES DNC ‘protest pit’ draws condemnation BY STEVEN STYCOS

Joseph Peckham, a union business agent from Cranston, called it "repulsive."

Daniel O’Connor, an anti-war protester from Norwood, Massachusetts, described it as "an interment camp."

Of all the sights at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, the "free speech zone," near the FleetCenter marked the starkest proof that freedom of speech and assembly is not what it was before the December 1999 anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle and the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Required by federal law to allow protests within "sight and sound" of the DNC, event planners constructed a small closed area surrounding a shuttered subway entrance about a block south of the FleetCenter. Civil libertarians objected, but the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit declined, on the eve of the convention, to issue an injunction to open or move the area.

The "protest pit" evokes images of a Chilean soccer stadium after the overthrow of President Salvador Allende, or perhaps of an imaginary batting cage under the George Washington Bridge. The 250-foot by 90-foot asphalt-surfaced area was underneath the elevated tracks of the MBTA’s green line. Jersey barriers and cyclone fencing, topped by heavy mesh netting, surrounded the entire area. There were three tunnel-like entrances and coils of barbed wire along the closed elevated track.

"We’re boycotting it as a group, because we find it insulting," says Matt, a Boston resident and member of the Bl(A)ck Tea Society, which described itself as a coalition of anti-authoritarian groups organizing against the DNC. "Plus, it’s a death trap."

A stage the size of a small kitchen with a microphone was in one corner. Because subway structures are in the middle of the area, the stage faces one fenced wall a mere 20 feet away. Large areas of the protest zone had, in the lingo of Fenway Park, "obstructed views."

Nevertheless, some protest groups used the area. On the afternoon of July 26, nine people wearing "godhatesfags.com" T-shirts were on stage in front of an audience of about 50, half of whom were reporters or photographers. While some screamed biblical references into the microphone, others held signs with such slogans as, "Boston = Sodom," "Kerry/Edwards, Fag Enablers," and "God Hates You." The crowd did not support the group’s message, and O’Connor climbed on top of the Jersey barrier 20 feet in front of the stage, grabbed the cyclone fence with one hand, leaned forward and extended his other arm to give members of the anti-gay group a one-finger salute.

It appeared to be a situation ripe for violence, but the nearest police were chatting outside the fenced area, far from the entrances.

Nothing happened, and the next morning, O’Connor was on stage, singing, "Someday We’ll be Together," accompanied by a CD on his boom box. Half a dozen people milled around. Signs supporting universal health-care and opposing the USA Patriot Act hung from the cyclone fencing. Jes Richardson of Mill Valley, California, stood in front of the stage, promoting peace with a wheeled nine-and-a-half-foot high statute of Mahatma Gandhi.

After confirming giving the anti-gay group the finger, O‘Connor explained during a break from singing, "It’s four days of the Democratic Convention, and it’s time to act out." He hopes Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry will adopt the gentle Motown hit as a theme song, he adds, and imprint it in the national consciousness, because, "It’s resonant and peaceful."