Free speech issues intensify during festival season Free speech issues intensify during festival season (September 10, 2004)

Individual expression limited to three areas during Art & Wine Fest

By Jon Wiener

While hundreds of thousands of protesters were planning to march through Manhattan and disrupt the Republican National Convention, Wendy Fleet was quietly sticking up for her free speech rights here in Mountain View.

Fleet is frequently seen walking around town with her modest "Teach Peace" sign. The Mountain View resident, who describes herself as "the daffy, chubby old lady," has been carrying the handmade 16-inch by 16-inch sign nearly every day since October 2002.

At this year's Small Brewers Festival on Aug. 15, three police officers, responding to a complaint that Fleet was "disrupting" the festival, took her aside and asked her to leave the premises. Twenty nervous minutes later, she had convinced them that she had the right to stay where she was.

The experience left her concerned, not for her safety or her First Amendment rights, but for those to whom freedom of expression comes less easily.

"If people at a festival see some simple mild thing being hauled off by the police, those people will never protest," she said. "It's so subtle."

With the city's largest festival of the year -- this weekend's Art & Wine Festival -- approaching, Fleet brought her case to the city council, hoping to force a public discussion on the subtle forces that quash dissent.

"It's not always with nightsticks and tear gas," said Fleet. "We tend to think of these rights as happening in Washington, D.C. or New York City, but it's right in our town, on our main streets. These rights are something we have to protect at home."

The Art & Wine Festival provides several "free-speech areas," which users have said are too far from the heart of the festival to be effective.

Lenny Siegel of Mountain View Voices for Peace said his group has reserved a table for the event but also plans to pass out leaflets outside the festival.

"It's not because we don't think we have a right to be in the middle of the festival, but because we think we'd be inconveniencing people if we were standing in front of the art booths," said Siegel.

The Chamber of Commerce, which puts on the event, has plans for three free speech areas at this year's festival: two at the south end of downtown Castro Street and one on a dirt lot on Evelyn Avenue. As of Monday, 22 groups and individuals had signed up for a table in one of the areas, down from over 30 at last year's festival.

In past years, the Mountain View police have taken people like Fleet, trying to spread their message to festival-goers, and escorted them to one of the free speech areas. Because of the fall-out from Fleet's experience at the Small Brewer's Festival, Mountain View police said they will not intervene in these situations unless an individual is breaking the law.

Council member Matt Neely, for one, is happy that Fleet has called attention to what he calls "a chilling effect."

"When free speech is compromised," he said, "people pause before they exercise it."

Carol Olson, president and CEO of the chamber, said the free speech areas are a valuable part of the festival, just as the large number of people the festival brings is valuable to the organizations in those areas.

"We're not putting free speech on the side streets. We're putting them right on Castro Street," said Olson.

For her part, Fleet said she considers her sign a contribution to society. "This is slippery stuff sometimes. If we don't think clearly about where our rights are and what it means and suddenly some little old lady with the 'Teach Peace' sign disappears, that's a loss for freedom and it's a loss for America."

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com.

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