E-Mail This Article to a Friend The Seventh Annual Muzzle Awards (continued)

Mitt Romney: His anti-leaflet policy stifles dissenting views

During his one and a half years in office, Mitt Romney, Massachusetts’s self-styled "reform governor," has cultivated a squeaky-clean image as a paragon of good government. But don’t be fooled. The truth is that Romney consistently dances on the border between allowing and discouraging free expression. And in a few cases, he’s crossed the line.

Take, for instance, what happened to Joe Bradley in May. A columnist for the MetroWest Daily News, Bradley collected a few leaflets from demonstrators on his way to a talk by the governor at the Fuller Middle School, in Framingham. Upon entering the school, he encountered a sign titled SECURITY NOTICE that read, THE FOLLOWING ITEMS WILL NOT BE ADMITTED: COATS BAGS WEAPONS SIGNAGE LITERATURE.

Literature? Oh, yes. As they passed through the metal detector, Bradley and others were told they had to turn over any leaflets they had in their possession before they would be allowed to enter. Bradley wrote that he refused and began to leave — until he let it slip that he was a journalist, and that he might write a column about the policy. At that point, he said that he received an apology and an invitation to return from Romney spokeswoman Nicole St. Peter. Bradley, to his credit, kept right on going. "I realized I finally understood Gov. Romney’s education policy: literature not allowed," Bradley wrote. Or as the Daily News put it in a subsequent editorial, "What were they worried about, paper cuts?"

In an e-mail to Muzzle Central, Romney’s communications director, Eric Fehrnstrom, cited "a misunderstanding involving an intern who took his job a little too seriously." Yet Fehrnstrom added it is indeed a matter of policy that protesters not be allowed to bring their literature into events where Romney is appearing, saying that "if they want to attend the event itself, we do ask that they leave their pickets and bullhorns and leaflets outside and not conduct their protest activities indoors."

But leaflets are not bullhorns, and handing out literature inside a meeting room is not the same as attempting to shout down the governor as he speaks. Fehrnstrom is wrong to conflate the two. And it’s especially unseemly for Romney’s staff to attempt to stifle dissent when he is appearing at a publicly owned building such as a school.

In addition to the no-leaflets policy, there is the Romney administration’s on-again/off-again/on-again "gag order," prohibiting agency officials — including cabinet secretaries — from speaking with legislators, reporters, and even mayors without permission. "It’s bad practice to have agencies expressing the administration’s point of view on legislation without checking first with the governor," Fehrnstrom told the Boston Herald last August. Yes, it’s true that employees do not have a First Amendment right to speak in defiance of their employer. But the gag order conflicts with the greater good of conducting the public’s business in public as much as possible.

Then there was a policy approved last summer by both Romney and the legislature to charge outrageous fees, from $1800 to $4650, to groups seeking to use any of the four function rooms at the State House. Initiated as a way of recouping costs during an era of tight money, the effect was to banish all but the most well-heeled organizations. Officials quickly said an exception would be made for nonprofits. But there was no getting around the fact that the people’s building was less open to the people than it had been before.

Dan Conley: Suffolk DA drags heels on case of UMass prof

A number of villains could be singled out in the April 3, 2003, arrest of UMass Boston Africana-studies professor Tony Van Der Meer. For instance, there was the Massachusetts National Guard recruiter who allegedly told both Van Der Meer and Tony Naro, a student handing out anti-war leaflets in commemoration of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, that they should both "be shot" like King. That, after all, is what led to the subsequent confrontation.

Or how about UMass Boston police officer William Lanergan? Summoned to the scene by the National Guard, Lanergan reportedly ordered Van Der Meer to "shut the fuck up" and then grabbed him, tearing his jacket and damaging his glasses. Police, naturally, charged Van Der Meer with assault.

The Muzzle, though, goes to Suffolk district attorney Dan Conley. Unlike the National Guardsman and Lanergan, Conley had an opportunity to review the case against Van Der Meer calmly, after the confrontation had already played itself out. Conley knew that numerous eyewitnesses had sworn that Van Der Meer hadn’t laid a hand on Lanergan or any other officer — that he was merely exercising his First Amendment right to speak out against the war and on behalf of Naro, who was one of his students.

Yet Conley waited until last December — some eight months later — to end the absurd case against Van Der Meer. And even then, he couldn’t admit that UMass police had been wrong. Van Der Meer was offered two months’ probation, after which time the charges that he had assaulted a police officer and resisted arrest would be dismissed.

Following Van Der Meer’s arrest, Conley’s spokesman, David Procopio, told the Boston Phoenix’s Kristen Lombardi that the charges "have nothing to do with free speech." Rather, he said, they amounted to "an allegation of assault and battery on a police officer — and the First Amendment doesn’t protect that" (see "Climate of Fear," News and Features, July 25, 2003). After the probation deal was reached, Procopio still refused to concede that the arrest had been wrongheaded, citing Van Der Meer’s "lack of any prior convictions," rather than the obvious fact that he’d done nothing wrong, as the principal reason for not moving ahead with a trial (see "Follow-Up," This Just In, December 19, 2003).

As Naro has observed, it seems clear that police, responding to a call about the confrontation, saw a white, uniformed National Guardsman and a black, dashiki-clad man yelling at each other and did what came naturally: they arrested the black man, got physical with him, and then claimed he had assaulted them. Conley, as prosecutors are wont to do, declined to question the veracity of the police account.

"Free speech," Van Der Meer told Lombardi, "is not a criminal act." Unfortunately, on one day in April 2003, it was.