By Marc Larocque
Boston Parks commissioner Antonia Pollak suggested last week that large grass-trampling gatherings should no longer be allowed on Boston Common, but should instead be held on the concrete-clad City Hall Plaza.
This came during a public hearing March 19, the first for the newly instated Special Committee on Boston Common, composed of City Councilors Mike Ross, Bill Linehan and Sal LaMattina.
The committee also discussed other issues like reducing property crimes and increasing drug arrests. Councilor Ross suggested commercial revenue could increase for abutting business with a lift on an alcohol prohibition placed on the area.
The proposed regulation of use of the Common, however, was a prominent issue discussed in local media, where city park officials and the Special Committee on Boston Common were urged to preserve the Common as a venue for freedom of expression and protest, for which it has been historically used.
Martin Luther King Jr. made a famous speech on the Common in 1965 after he led 22,000 people to the green in a rally starting in Roxbury. In the ’60s, the Vietnam War drew tens of thousands out to demonstrate. Last year, the public grounds were host to scores of Darfur activists and antiwar protesters.
But Parks Department officials were quick to clarify claims that civil liberties would be stifled.
“This has nothing to do with free speech or antiwar protesters,” Pollak said in an e-mail to The News. “In fact, there is an area specifically zoned for that purpose below the State House that requires no permit. That is also the most popular location for these groups due to its proximity to the State House. In fact, there were two rallies there this week, one both pro and con regarding casinos.”
Unless the organizers of one of these events want to bring heavy staging and machinery onto the Common they will not be affected, she said.
At the meeting, the committee heard testimony from residents of the area who mentioned “concert-like” events such as Hempfest, the gay pride celebration and Shakespeare on the Common that brought in noise, litter and destroyed the turf. One man, who has lived on the corner of Beacon Hill and Charles Street for 20 years and is a member of the Beacon Hill Civic Association, urged the group to adopt legislation that transforms the Common into “park space rather than use space or event space.”
“Historically the use of that park – the Common – there’s been a tradition that it should be used for larger types of events,” said James, whose last name was inaudible in the video of the hearing. “And as far as I can tell that’s always been a sort of vague, mutual agreement. The issue from the perspective of those who live in the neighborhood is that large events tend to damage the Common. There have been trash issues, destruction of real estate issues and noise issues.”
He concluded that it would be in the Special Committee’s best interest to pressure groups to seek permits before uniting en masse.
A representative from Councilor Ross’s office also offered assuaging about the proposed restrictions.
“The issue on this is certainly not a free speech issue,” said Reuben Kantor, a Ross spokesperson. “We just want to make sure when big tents and large vehicles come onto the Common that there is a process for that. We want to take steps to limit [damage] with licenses and permits. We don’t want events coming in and destroying thousands of feet of grassland.”
Still, some local activists said compromising any rights to assemble could create problems.
“I believe that, basically, permits should be given unfettered,” said Nate Goldshlag, coordinator for a local chapter of Veterans for Peace. “The Boston Common has a long history of welcoming protest and being a place where citizens’ democracy is in full-view.”
If the city were to stop a group on a stipulation it would be an outrage, Goldshlag said.
“Grass can be replanted and tended, our democracy is fragile and in many ways nonexistent already,” he said. “Taking the Common away from protesters would just be another nail in the coffin.”
For one Northeastern activist, the new proposed regulation of Boston Common use does not pose a problem.
“I could never support a move that impedes on our ability to use a venue like the Common as a rally point for our cause and other causes alike,” said Sunish Oturkar, president of NUSTAND. “However, if large scale events like the Darfur rally we organized last April are actually the main contributors in the destruction of the actual Common itself, we must take the right precautions to avoid this. It’s a mutual relationship: we use the Common to help us, and we should make sure that we are not damaging it in the process.”
Oturkar said groups can, “in the worst case scenario,” slightly modify their events to suit the proposed restrictions.
For Tali Hatuka, an architect and urban planner who has been a research fellow in Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, the proposal could pose a problem that is more than an issue of respecting neighbors’ wishes to decrease noise and help the city maintain green space – it’s a critical decision that raises questions about citizenship and civil participation.
In respect to the notion that protests should shift to locations like City Hall Plaza, Hatuka said, “[It] will redefine the culture and performance of large scale events and define hierarchical relationships between the citizen and authority, which do not exist now in the informal space of the park.”
Hatuka is an expert in the study of how the urban design of an area affects the dynamics of civil demonstrations there. Her multimedia exhibition, “Urban Design and Civil Protest,” is currently on display in the MIT Museum Compton Gallery until June 9.
“Protests and other large-scale events take place within physical space that represents the civic identity of that society,” she said. “Thus, modifying this setting and, in particular, moving it to the City Hall Plaza would affect the way citizens negotiate with authority. We must recall that City Hall is a formal space and a constant reminder of the spatial hierarchy between the citizens and the government.”
The desolate, windswept City Hall Plaza, the City Hall building and others that surround it would have a visual impact, she said, much unlike the lush, intimate Common.
“The large scale of both space and structure has an affect on the way people express themselves,” Hatuka said. “Think about the scale of buildings, the rigidity feeling in space, its bareness and in particular how the latter affect the climate of space.”
The formal setting of City Hall also might intimidate those considering an anti-authoritarian voice, she said.
“Like many other city halls all over the world, this space is under constant surveillance, which no doubt intensifies the dynamic of gathering in this space,” Hatuka said. “At a time when the US advocates democracy worldwide, one should not disrupt the existing practices of civil participation, but instead think of new ways of engaging citizens in what is happening all over the world. Lastly, traditionally many political protests in America take place in parks.”
