In the wake of last week's vote by the St. Petersburg City Council not to vacate the sidewalk that leads into the BayWalk retail complex, a vote that BayWalk owners had demanded before they would consider investing more money in the struggling mall, the activist group St. Pete for Peace says they will not protest on the sidewalk for at least the next year.
On the organization's website, the group writes:
The recent Baywalk/sidewalk proposal was an attack on free speech and would have set a dangerous precedent for our city and our country. In last week’s city council vote, everyone's First Amendment rights were maintained and our right to demonstrate was upheld. This is what we were striving for all along.
If the city and/or Baywalk’s owners again try to ban protesters from the public sidewalk in front of Baywalk, we will re-assess our position and again struggle to maintain people’s rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
This clearly puts the onus back on the owners, C.W. Capital, to put their money where their mouth is (okay, lame expression). For months, they and their supporters in St. Pete have said that, despite the withering economy, they would only reinvest and could only re-market the complex by insuring that protestors could not disturb customers. St. Pete for Peace has called their bluff.
We knew that the Kevin White case was going to be brought up again today by Hillsborough County Commissioners at their bi-weekly meeting.
But we didn't know that Commissioner Rose Ferlita would be announcing that she plans to ask her fellow commissioners to sue White to get back some of the taxpayer funds that are associated with his sexual discrimination lawsuit.
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 7, 2009.