Quick! Look around you: you may be in a Spontaneous Crowd Management Event!
The City of Tucson is considering changes to the municipal code that seem to have some conflicts with first amendment rights.
Some history:
After the original Occupy Tucson gatherings in 2011 (in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement), the group split into two. The Occupy Tucson movement itself now has an office downtown, and continues to organize, sponsor and support various activities. I am only peripherally involved with the group, but I follow their Facebook page and receive their newsletters and I have participated in a few of their demonstrations, including the climate march last September.
A group spun off from Occupy Tucson called Occupy Public Land, which has the mission of keeping public spaces open to public use, I think. Their press release is here. The syntax of that document is a little garbled. The group also calls itself the Safe Park initiative, I think, which seems to have the goal of decriminalizing homelessness.
Mind you, I think the idea of decriminalizing homelessness is a good goal, but this group seems to have some issues. Ultimately, maybe inevitably, things have gone pretty wrong for the Safe Parks group: recently arrests have been made for sale of "marijuana and dangerous drugs" (a notable change of locution in the now declining War on Drugs, I think) and now the City Council is getting ready to crack down pretty hard.
New news:
Tucson is a fairly liberal island in Arizona, and this presents some problems for the City Council. They really want to be concerned and caring for the local homeless population, while at the same time making sure the city is non-threatening to various large regional events such as the yearly Gem & Mineral Show, and last weekend's Festival of Books (third largest in the country!). Having people set up housekeeping in the central city park (because they have no other place) may generate some consternation among our visitors.
On Tuesday evening (17 March: Tomorrow), the City Council will be considering some changes to the local ordinances covering public behavior that attempt to address the Safe Parks' downtown encampment. Unfortunately, as is usual for most forms of government, their initial movement is a grand overreach, and citizens need to step up to pull them back. The meeting agenda is here.
Of particular concern are items near the end, marked "TUCSON CODE", both concerning camping on public property (Ordinance 11251) and crowd management (Ordinance 11250), and I'm having these thoughts:
Regarding Ordinance 11251, the new section is here, and the rationale is here (PDF files). I'm pretty sure this says that a person can't sleep in a vehicle or in a cardboard box anywhere in town unless s/he is part of an event which has been pre-authorized by the City Manager.
The rationale goes out of its way to explicitly state that homelessness itself is not a violation of the law, but makes clear that any outward indication of homelessness is a criminal offense.
The other one is much, much worse: for Ordinance 11250, the new section is here, and the rationale is here (PDF files). This defines a "Crowd Management Event" as anything with over 100 people. Note that the Tucson Metro Area has approximately a million people, and so that definition represents 0.01% of the local population.
And note the activities prohibited within the "Event":
- Entering the "Event" if the police have decided you shouldn't
- Throwing or propelling an object. (Bicycles, strollers, wheelchairs, yourself? Nothing Shall Move, apparently.)
- Operating a drone over the "Event" (we all have those)
- Possessing anything that a police officer might use for crowd control (a voice?)
- Wearing anything that might protect you from police assault
- Wearing a mask (a swipe at Anonymous here)
- Walking, running or otherwise moving, or obstructing. (Again, Nothing Shall Move)
- Refusing to leave when they tell you to (oops, conflicts with the Nothing Shall Move directive)
- Assaulting, obstructing, resisting or hindering the nice policeman (needed to say that twice)
- "Removing, displacing, or interfering with any lawfully placed sign, barricade, property, equipment, or other traffic control device used in connection with a spontaneous special event."
Wha...? Did they just say "spontaneous"?? How do all those signs, barricades and equipment appear at spontaneous events?
Worse, how do you know the precise moment when the 150-or-so people around you becomes a "spontaneous event" requiring crowd management? Is that when the barricades suddenly appear? Should I drop, inert, to the ground now?
I'm making fun of this a little here. I live outside town, so I don't really have standing on this issue. But the proposed changes are so outrageous that I hope that my friends here who do live in town make sure that their ward representatives know that this won't do.
No, this won't do at all.
7:07 PM PT: Blog for Arizona is reporting that the council has removed the Crowd Management issue from the agenda, slightly in advance of a protest this evening. The Homelessness ordinance remains.