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Route sets stage for violence, lawyers argue
Lawyers for demonstrators cited an engineering study in challenging a Sept. 1 march route set by St. Paul police.
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Attorneys for a group planning a mass antiwar march on the Republican National Convention claimed Tuesday that the march route laid out by St. Paul police could set the stage for violence and a police confrontation with marchers.
In federal court papers, the attorneys cited an engineering study, commissioned by the protesters, that concluded the narrowness of the route along with a built-in bottleneck means the Sept. 1 demonstration would take far longer than the two hours allotted by police.
They also charged that with the march scheduled from noon to 2 p.m., rather than later in the day, demonstrators will be marching outside an empty Xcel Energy Center, the convention site, and won't be heard or seen by delegates who arrive later.
Tom Walsh, a St. Paul police spokesman, questioned how protesters would know that delegates were not inside the Xcel. He said that, to his knowledge, police had not yet been informed of the convention schedule.
"In recent history, no previous city which held a major political convention has provided as much access to the venue as has the city of St. Paul," he said.
Walsh also said that there were tens of thousands of people on the sidewalks who attended Barack Obama's rally at the Xcel last week and that there were no confrontations.
Teresa Nelson, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said lawyers for the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, are seeking a hearing before U.S. District Judge Joan Erickson by June 30. Protesters want a temporary injunction that would order police to give a permit for the demonstrators to march later in the day and along the initial route they sought.
Protesters originally sued to force police to grant a demonstration permit but before a scheduled hearing in May, police issued one. The protesters have amended their suit, challenging the march route and schedule.
James Benshoof, a civil engineer with Wenck Associates in Maple Plain, conducted a study of the march route for the protesters' attorneys and estimated that only 28,000 protesters could pass by the Xcel from noon to 2 p.m. Organizers anticipate 50,000 marchers, and Benshoof said it would take three hours and 38 minutes for that number to complete the route. If 100,000 demonstrate, as some have predicted, it would take more than six hours, he wrote.
Randy Furst • 612-673-7382
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