The Agora

Mr. Wade is the president of The Reuben Company, the organization that controls where elected officials cannot speak, which citizens can and cannot petition their elected officials, and decide what speech is inoffensive enough to be allowed in tax-payer owned spaces. His company also wields enough clout that it can enlist state law enforcement agencies to forcibly remove elected officials from in front of their own meeting chambers. A company so powerful that the City of Toledo has to petition state government for the right of legislators to speak out on pending resolutions. A company that values all speech--just so long as it doesn't endanger lucrative contracts with Columbus, or offend a second-shift security manager who yearns for the feel of jack boots on his feet, or a state cop who likes to crack hippie heads

As the Canadian Bard (Bruce Cockburn, of course) said, "The trouble with normal is it always gets worse."
12:45:58 PM    comment []trackback []

Yesterday, two serving City councilmen held a press conference and question-and-answer session in the lobby of the building that houses the City Council chambers, along with a number of other city, county and state offices. The even was held to draw attention to a resolution the two councilmen had introduced condemning the USA Patriot Act.

Two Toledo councilmen and a small group of citizens holding a banner were kicked out of Government Center yesterday while holding a news conference raising questions about the USA Patriot Act.

An Ohio Highway Patrol trooper held Councilman Pete Gerken[base ']s elbow as he escorted him to the front exit of the building.

Also ordered to leave was Councilman Frank Szollosi and the group called Citizens for Individual Rights and Freedoms, whose members unfurled a banner criticizing the USA Patriot Act as "unpatriotic."

Mr. Gerken, who pulled his arm away from the trooper, said afterward that many news events have taken place in the lobby of Government Center, including one only 24 hours earlier on the subject of electric rates, in which he participated.

"This is an elected official in the building talking about an issue pending before council," Mr. Gerken said about himself. "This was not an overtly political press conference." He said he would protest to the Ohio Building Authority, which owns Government Center.

Mr. Gerken and Mr. Szollosi are co-sponsors of a council resolution condemning the Patriot Act. The law, enacted after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, broadens federal investigative powers. Critics have said it gives investigators too much power to snoop on law-abiding citizens.

You read that right. Two duly-elected council members were evicted from the building that holds both their meeting room and their office for leading what was, by all accounts a peaceful and quiet informational meeting.

Griff Allan, the second shift security supervisor, later told Mr. Gerken the reason he was removed was because a banner had been unfurled.

Building Manager Michael L. Sullivan also cited the banner as well as the topic as inappropriate for inside a public place.

"If they had been inside council chambers or outside the building, nothing would have happened," Mr. Sullivan said. "This is a public area. To avoid offending anyone, we say you can[base ']t do it in a public area."

I visit that building several times a day, and gatherings in the public areas are not uncommon (the public meeting rooms of the council and the County Commissioners open off of each side of the lobby), banners are a common sight at gatherings outside on building grounds, and I have seen a few banners inside as well.

The real motivation isn't too hard to discern. The building, One Government Center, isn't owned by the city, but by the State of Ohio, through a chartered agency called the Ohio Building Authority which is run by five individuals, all appointed by the Governor. Currently, all five appointees have been appointed by Republican Governors. The day-to-day operations of the building are run by The Reuben Co. a politically well-connected.

If you are skeptical that a building lobby can be a political battleground, you should know that the name of One government Center has been a politically charged issue since the building was constructed. Republican legislators were angered when the building was named after popular, Toledo-born Governor Michael V, DiSalle, and just a few years ago the Republican controlled legislature retaliated by naming the plaza in front of the building after James Rhodes, the governor who ordered the National Guard troops to Kent State University in 1972, and who remained unapologetic for the subsequent deaths his entire life.
10:31:10 AM    comment []trackback []