Demonstrators complain protest forced ‘out of view’
Topeka ? A Lawrence woman who went to Topeka to protest President Bush’s visit said she was outraged by the restrictions on free speech, including a police officer telling her and her children they were walking in a “no sign” zone.
“It seems like things that you’d encounter in another country,” Christy Kennedy said.
Kennedy, who describes herself as a “mild-mannered mother of four,” took three of her children to the event. They began walking to what she’d been told would be a designated “free speech zone” at a park near the site of Bush’s speech, but she said they took a meandering route because police kept telling them different streets were closed.
When they arrived at the protest, they turned around and left because dump trucks and railroad cars were obstructing the view of the event, she said.
“I understand the need for security,” Kennedy said. “The purpose of it seemed to have any sort of dissent or protest completely out of view and impossible to get to.”
The family finally wound up with a group of protesters at 17th Street and Topeka Boulevard, about four blocks from the Brown commemoration site. When the presidential motorcade passed, Kennedy said, police told her to stand back from the sidewalk.
Topeka resident Gloria Sanchez stood at the same corner wearing a T-shirt that said “Let’s Vote that Son-of-a-Bush out of office.”
“The decision to go to Iraq was the wrong decision,” Sanchez said. “We need to stop these decision-makers.”
She said about 100 protesters were at the corner when the president’s motorcade sped by.
Several people who live in the surrounding neighborhood had signs on the their porch, calling for an investigation into deaths at the Shawnee County Jail.
Security was tight throughout the Brown events.
Danielle Dempsey-Swopes, executive director of the Kansas African-American Affairs Commission, said she was assigned last week to be on hand as federal agents inspected children’s band instruments.
Before Bush’s arrival at Forbes Field, a dog sniffed through each vehicle on the presidential motorcade. It also sniffed photographers’ camera bags, prompting a White House official to ask a member of the media to stop photographing the sniffing.
The Rev. Leo Barbee, a Lawrence minister who met Bush on Monday, said he had to give officials his vital information ahead of time for a background check.
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