No water or toilets at Freedom Cage
By Sue Lindsay, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published August 27, 2008 at 3:07 p.m.
Updated August 27, 2008 at 3:12 p.m.
The vast unused Freedom Cage for protesters at the Pepsi Center has no water or toilets in apparent violation of a federal judge’s order.
The Secret Service and other government officials also had assured the judge that most delegates would be walking past the protest area on their way to the convention, but none do, said Mark Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union.
In fact, the protest area, now known as the Freedom Cage, is so remote and disengaged from the convention that few protesters are using it.
But those who do have to leave in search of water or toilets.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger issued an order Aug. 6 that set conditions for the protest zone and resolved an ACLU lawsuit against the city and U.S. Secret Service over security restrictions.
Page 10 of the order states: “Water stations and sanitary facilities will be provided within the zone.”
However, the nearest portable toilet is a block and a half away. The nearest water is a single water fountain with two spigots for filling bottles that is rigged up on a fire hydrant a block away from the demonstration zone.
There are no signs directing people in the demonstration where to go for toilets or water. The toilets and water station are not visible from the demonstration zone.
Silverstein said the zone does not reflect what the judge was told by the city and Secret Service.
“Judge Krieger relied on assurances that the city would provide water and sanitation facilities at the demonstration zone and they’re not,” he said. “It’s just one more thing making it inhospitable for protesters. It’s so desolate there that no one wants to use it.”
He said the site also contradicts what Krieger was told about the location of the site.
“The whole idea was that it was supposed to be within sight and sound of delegates who would be walking on this path by the demonstration site to the convention. None of the delegates are walking on that path.”
Silverstein said the Secret Service told Krieger that a majority of delegates would be walking on this path to the Pepsi Center.
They don’t, he said.
And you can’t even see the Pepsi Center from the protest zone, which is more than 700 feet from the Pepsi Center’s front doors and obstructed from view by a media tent, Silverstein said.
While Krieger did not specifically order that water and bathrooms be provided, Silverstein said, her order states that these would be provided because that’s what the city and Secret Service told her during the trial.
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August 27, 2008
3:31 p.m.
Suggest removal
EZBakeOven writes:
There are plenty of porta-pottys down there. You'd have to be pretty stoned to not figure out where they are.
August 27, 2008
3:55 p.m.
Suggest removal
The_Punnisher writes:
It looks like our SS is living up to the brutality of the German SS of the 1930's...
All that is needed is the railroad boxcars...( and they are on a siding next to the jail on Smith Road )...