Marchers' shirts cause stir at Rocky Mountain National Park

Fernando Quintero, Rocky Mountain News

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Rocky Mountain National Park officials violated the Constitution when they blocked two peace activists from entering, a lawyer claimed today.

The two California teens, whose T-shirts said "March 4 Peace," are walking to New York to promote their cause.

When they tried to get in the park Sunday morning, rangers detained them and told them they needed a permit.

Mark Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, said the teens’ First Amendment rights were violated.

"To say to two persons who happen to be carrying a message as they walk through the park that they’re carrying on a demonstration that requires a permit is ridiculous," Silverstein said.

But a park official said rangers were simply following established rules.

Sunday morning Ashley Casale, 19, said she and her partner, Mike Israel, 18, were making their way through Colorado as they walk from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., when they were detained at the west entrance to the park.

Casale said they were stopped by a park ranger and asked to remove bibs that were pinned to their shirts which read: "March 4 Peace."

"They said they couldn’t let us in because we were making a political statement," Casale said.

They were told they needed a demonstration permit, she said.

Casale said a park ranger took the pair’s identifications then took nearly three hours to determine they were in violation of park rules that require permits for "public assemblies, meetings, gatherings, demonstrations, parades and other public expressions of views."

Park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson said park logs show the pair arrived at the west gate entrance at 9:04 a.m. and headed into the park at 10:15 a.m. — a little more than an hour total.

She said the two students were accompanied by two reporters and that the park’s staff worked to accommodate the group as quickly as possible for a Sunday morning, when the park is often full of visitors.

Casale, a college freshman from Connecticut, said she asked park officials to explain to her and Israel how their bibs were any different from bumper stickers or T-shirts with messages that park visitors wear.

Patterson said bumper stickers and T-shirts are private expressions.

"They had placards. They had reporters with them. They were promoting their Web site. It became a public demonstration and public expression," Patterson said.

She said the two youths could have avoided the holdup if they had applied for a permit ahead of time.

Patterson added that the group was planning on walking up Trail Ridge Road through the park, which raised concerns about their safety because there is considerable traffic on the road and it is subject to sudden changes in weather.

Gayle Watson, of the Mountain Forum for Peace, said a San Francisco peace group called her Nederland-based organization to offer assistance to Casale and Israel after they learned of the Sunday incident.

She said she encountered the pair in the park and offered them food and water. As a compromise with park officials, they had removed their bibs and written their message in ink on their T-shirts.