Thank you to wise government and police officials in both communities.
Americans cherish both free speech and human rights. Thanks to outspoken activists and lawyers, the First Amendment now lives in Northeast Florida, where we're nurturing and encouraging people to speak their minds in civil discourse.
Our Founders knew that the answer to speech is more speech, not repression.
I love how the University of Florida President Kent Fuchs, the City of Gainesville, Alachua County and the State of Florid handled rebarbative reprobate reptilian reactionary racist Richard Spencer.
I love how St. Augustine handled the August 28, 2017 City Commission debate on Plaza de la Constitucion Civil War veteran monument.
It comes down to training, caring and respect.
Three cheers!
We're Americans. We're all in this together. As LBJ said to Congress after Selma, "We SHALL overcome!"
Editorial: UF shows how to preserve free speech
Friday, October 20, 2017 4:22pm
Tampa Bay Times
The University of Florida was forced to navigate a treacherous terrain of constitutional concerns and public safety this week, all in a glaring public spotlight. In the end, Thursday's appearance by Richard Spencer was a success — as much as an unwelcome visit from a notorious white nationalist can be. The university, under the careful leadership of president Kent Fuchs, kept students safe and accommodated everyone's rights, while Spencer's appearance amounted to nothing but an amateurish spectacle.
UF, the state's premier university with more than 50,000 students, had little choice but to allow Spencer's visit. Public institutions cannot censor speech, even by someone who espouses "peaceful" ethnic cleansing and a white ethno-state. And even after Spencer's "Unite the Right" rally on a Virginia campus in August devolved into violence and left a woman dead, UF administrators could not prevent his visit, they could only prepare for it. That meant a state of emergency being declared in Gainesville by Gov. Rick Scott, the influx of more than 1,000 law enforcement officers to watch over nearly 2,500 demonstrators and a virtual suspension of normal campus life — not to mention the outsize attention Spencer craves. The most serious incident — involving the arrest of three men charged with attempted homicide and accused of chanting about Adolf Hitler and firing a gunshot as they confronted a group of protesters — occurred after the Spencer's appearance. But the overall preparation by the state and the university paid off.
Such is the price of the First Amendment. The cost came to nearly $600,000, borne by taxpayers. It's a lot of money, yes, but it was a necessary investment to prevent injury and preserve free speech.
Why didn't Gainesville become Charlottesville when Richard Spencer came to visit?
USA TODAY NETWORK
Arek L Sarkissian, Naples (Fla.) Daily News
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — On the day after white supremacist Richard B. Spencer delivered a speech that brought 2,500 people – mostly protesters – to the University of Florida, President Kent Fuchs said what happened in Charlottesville, Va., was a wakeup call.
“If Charlottesville had not occurred I don’t think we would have taken it as seriously,” Fuchs said on Friday. Seeing those images, the assault weapons and that death, just woke me up.
“That was my wakeup call."
More: Who is Richard Spencer?
Gainesville also benefited from timing. A Confederate memorial statue that stood for years in its downtown was no longer there. The statue, known as “Old Joe,” was moved in August, two days after white supremacist and anti-fascist groups engaged in a series of clashes in Charlottesville that turned deadly.
“They didn’t have anything to rally around like they did in Charlottesville,” Fuchs said. “But they also revealed their tactics, like tiki torches, that we were able to ban.”
Fuchs and 1,000 law enforcement professionals from around the country braced for the worst as Spencer planned to speak Thursday at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. By sunset, only two people had been arrested amid the protests near the venue. Several skirmishes were promptly quelled.
More: Richard Spencer supporters arrested in University of Florida area shooting
More: University president: Richard Spencer hoping for violence to build movement
A shooting occurred about a mile south of campus as protesters left the event, and three of Spencer’s supporters were arrested in connection with the incident later that night. No one was injured, and the men from Texas are facing attempted homicide charges.
“That’s a huge component of luck, that no one was hit by that bullet,” Fuchs said. “Or if it happened on campus or god forbid if someone was hurt, we would be having a very different conversation.”
A Gainesville police officer actually heard the gunshot and arrived at the scene in seconds. Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell said the abundance of officers at the event sent a message to anyone with plans to cause trouble.
“We also had the luxury that I don’t think Charlottesville did of at least six weeks of planning,” Darnell said. “The planning and capability of marshaling all of those resources helped.”
Darnell called on the Florida Sheriff’s Association and Gov. Rick Scott to summon resources from across the state. Specialized teams were clustered around the center on rooftops, placed undercover within the crowds and monitored video cameras.
The officers who responded were told to have a standard for arrests. If someone threw a punch, they went to jail, she said.
“If someone threw a wad of paper at you, we’d tell them to knock it off,” she said. “But throwing a punch at somebody reaches the level of an arrest.
“Those were the rules of engagement, which were clear and worked out beautifully,” she said.
Fuchs said rated the communities' response to the event excellent. But now he has to find a way to cover its $600,000 cost. There’s no money in his budget or any research institution to cover such a cost.
“That’s 1,000 student tuitions right there,” Fuchs said. “It’s not sustainable.”
Fuchs said he hoped the university's efforts to guard against potential violence would begin discussions to find a more sustainable solution to contend with such divisive events.
The resources expended, he said, helped subsidize hate speech.
“I’m not looking for money, I want a solution for this nation,” Fuchs said
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Gainesville Sun
Behind-scenes logistics at protest let officers control chaos
By Cindy Swirko
Posted Oct 20, 2017 at 7:02 PM
Updated Oct 20, 2017 at 7:17 PM
Thursday’s “rules of engagement” were for officers to stay hands off until demonstrators laid hands on one another.
When a man with a swastika T-shirt was punched by a Richard Spencer protester and chased down Hull Road Thursday, police intervened only when he ran as far as he could before hitting a line of officers backed by trucks across the road. Officers grabbed him and pulled him behind the line.
When two supporters of Spencer’s white nationalist ideology were mobbed by protesters, police watched behind barricades as the men — visibly nervous and shaken — were enclosed by the chanting, yelling opponents. An irritating substance was sprayed and three people, possibly including the supporters, were taken by authorities for treatment.
Inside a command post, law enforcement was watching it all. Cameras placed on several buildings beamed the live action to leaders of the key agencies involved in safety at the event at the University of Florida.
Among them was Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell, who said the rules of engagement Thursday were hands-off until hands went on a supporter or protester.
“Basically, person-to-person violence or battery of a public safety officer was not going to be tolerated. We had high tolerance for property crimes. If somebody was stomping on a bike we might let them go but if someone was turning over a car or breaking a series of windows we would act,” Darnell said. “If it’s posturing or verbal, that’s all part of freedom of speech. If blows started being thrown, we were prepared to step in.”
The decisions by police fall in line with the First Amendment constitutional right assembly and speech.
Clay Calvert, director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at UF, said Spencer’s inside protesters — who weren’t violent, but booed, told him to leave and questioned why he was there — did not participate in what is called by law a “heckler’s veto,” despite Spencer’s claims.
Calvert said the term heckler’s veto comes from a court case from Skokie, Illinois, where a court determined that Nazis could march through the city, despite its heavy Jewish presence. It held that it was the government’s responsibility to protect the Nazis from a hostile reaction, he said.
Thursday, police were required by law to protect Spencer and other speakers on stage from violent acts, but not from “boos or hisses,” he said.
Spencer became visibly frustrated as the crowd relentlessly chanted and booed, which made it difficult for him to make coherent sentences.
“He clearly did not anticipate the reaction,” Calvert said. “But the burden is on him to have a larger microphone in this case ... The First Amendment gave Richard Spencer the right to speak, but it didn’t give him the right to speak effectively.”
Few incidents occurred on the University of Florida campus when Spencer, who espouses white nationalist beliefs, spoke. However, three white nationalists were arrested on attempted murder charges after law enforcement officials said one of the men fired a shot at protesters after the event.
Protesters vastly outnumbered Spencer’s supporters. Local authorities didn’t know how many people to expect on both sides leading up to Thursday, so reinforcements were called in. Many were specialists — rapid response teams, SWAT teams, bicycle police.
More than 1,000 officers came from across Florida. All received training from local law enforcement on the rules of engagement so that no matter how situations may have been handled at home, they were to follow the specified procedures here.
Darnell said commanders were monitoring the scene at the county’s Emergency Operations Center with the help of cameras on buildings that enabled them to see where confrontations were occurring, the marching and chanting, and the speech inside the Phillips Center.
Officers, including some perched on top of buildings, were also relaying information. Rarely did commanders get nervous about what they were seeing and hearing.
“The speech — seeing the energy level and tension rising there was a concern. It could have been a flashpoint at any time,” Darnell said. “Some of the skirmishes were a concern. But I knew we were so prepared and had the right people involved, that were going to make the right decisions.”
UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes said life returned to normal on campus Friday. UF President Kent Fuchs, in a meeting with The Sun a week before Spencer’s speech, said he does not foresee and policy changes — such as requiring that a student sponsor any speakers who rent UF facilities — as a result of the Spencer experience.
Sikes reiterated that Friday.
“I am not aware of anything changing. I expect us to review our policies just to make sure we are comfortable where we are,” Sikes said. “In terms of the communication we were able to get out to the community, the community seemed to understand our responsibility ... and seems to be very knowledgeable about what was going on.”
Clay Calvert, director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at UF, said Spencer’s inside protesters, who weren’t violent but booed, told him to leave and questioned why he was there, did not participate in what is called by law a “heckler’s veto,” despite Spencer’s claims that they were.
Calvert said the term heckler’s veto comes from a court case from Skokie, Illinois, where a court determined that Nazis could march through the city, despite its heavy Jewish presence. It held that it was the government’s responsibility to protect the Nazis from a hostile reaction, he said said.
Thursday, police were required by law to protect Spencer and other speakers on stage from violent acts, but not from “boos or hisses,” he said.
Spencer became visibly frustrated Thursday as the Phillips Center crowd chanted and booed, not letting up throughout his talk, which made it difficult for him to make coherent sentences.
“He clearly did not anticipate the reaction,” Calvert said. “But the burden is on him to have a larger microphone in this case ... The First Amendment gave Richard Spencer the right to speak, but it didn’t give him the right to speak effectively.”
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