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Commentary
	A victory for the 1st Amendment (Published July 26, 2004) By BILL MOSLEY

On July 12, after more than nine months of preparation, outreach, delays—and more than a little nervous anxiety – the "Budget Autonomy for the District (BAD) Day 7" were acquitted in D.C. Superior Court on the charge of "unlawful entry" in the office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

A jury of D.C. residents deliberated for nearly two days before concluding that federal prosecutors had not demonstrated that the seven – David Barrows, Jill Blankespoor, Adam Eidinger, Anise Jenkins, Zoe Mitchell, Karen A. Szulgit and I – had broken any laws when we visited Hastert’s congressional office on Oct. 1, 2003. We had come to Capitol Hill to deliver petitions bearing over 1,000 signatures in support of freeing the District’s budget from control of Congress. We chose Oct. 1 for our visit because it was the day the District’s fiscal 2004 budget was supposed to have taken effect – but had not because Congress had not approved it.

We intended to remind the speaker that among all U.S. states, cities, counties and territories, only the District must submit its budget to Congress for approval; that Congress’ annual failure to approve the D.C. budget on time imposes unique and unwarranted financial burdens on local government; and that elementary principles of democracy demand that D.C. residents enjoy not only control over their own budget and laws, but full voting representation in Congress as well.

As we entered the courtroom on July 6 for the beginning of the trial, few thought we would win – and sometimes even we doubted our chances. Prior to the trial, Judge Craig Iscoe granted the government’s motion to prohibit us from making any reference to our political motivations, causes or beliefs. This robbed us of a critical message to deliver to the jury – that we had gone to Capitol Hill to fight for their rights.

As we tried to present our case, the judge arbitrarily broadened this limitation to our mentioning anything we did prior to entering Hastert’s office. We could not refer to the large, spirited rally for budget autonomy held earlier that day. Nor could we mention that, just prior to petitioning Hastert’s office, we had visited the offices of D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, where we and our petitions were received cordially (we even had the opportunity to meet briefly with Davis). These restrictions on our testimony in the face of the government’s vast prosecutorial resources left us in the position of David facing Goliath, had David been forced to fight with one hand tied behind his back – and without a stone for his slingshot.

So our testimony involved only events in Hastert’s office, where our lobbying received a chillier reception. Staff members interrupted us as we attempted to deliver our message, members of the media who accompanied us were forced to leave almost immediately, and within one minute of our saying "hello" the staff demanded that we leave as well. We reminded them that one year ago, the Stand Up! for Democracy in D.C. Coalition had written to the speaker asking for his support for budget autonomy, to which the staff replied that the office responded only to residents of the 14th congressional district of Illinois, represented by Hastert; they could not spend even 37 cents for a stamp to reply to D.C. taxpayers. Nevertheless, we stayed in the hopes of even a brief meeting with the speaker, but we were hauled away in handcuffs by the U.S. Capitol Police for having the temerity to exercise our right to petition the government.

During the trial the federal prosecutors who tried our case (and who try all criminal cases in the District – our referendum to create a local district attorney has been ignored by Congress) tried to prove that we had entered a private office without permission and that we were physically preventing staff from moving about the suite. We responded that we had entered a public lobby area open to everyone, where visitors often wait in anticipation of meetings (a photo placed in evidence by the government even showed racks of magazines for this purpose), and that by the government’s own admission, staffers were able to move easily through the lobby, and in and out of private offices, while we were there.

The not-guilty verdict illustrates that while D.C.’s budgets, laws, prosecutors and courts are under the control of the federal government, D.C. juries are still composed of D.C. residents who can and do think for themselves. Many of the citizens who sat on our jury work for the D.C. government or local nonprofits groups, where they experience firsthand the harm caused by federal interference in our local budget. Under colonial rule, our democratic rights are few -- and the right to be heard by a jury of D.C. citizens is one of the most precious of them.

And while the verdict represents a victory, however modest, for the D.C. democracy movement, it was perhaps a bigger one for the U.S. Constitution. We entered Hastert’s office to petition the government and engage in freedom of speech, rights guaranteed by the First Amendment – another fact the judge refused to let us put before the jury. We believed it was especially critical for D.C. residents to be able to petition voting members of Congress, since we lack voting representation of our own.

The acquittal also was a tribute to citizen power. We defended ourselves in court, acting as our own counsel, although none of us are attorneys (but with Mark Goldstone and Gilda Sherrod-Ali, our able attorney advisers, at our sides). We also filled the courtroom with our family, friends and supporters, whose number included several D.C. elected officials, including Delegate Norton, Councilman Adrian Fenty and "shadow" Sen. Florence Pendleton – in addition to Councilman Phil Mendelson and "shadow" Rep. Ray Browne, who spoke at our pre-trial rally. It was clear to all present that we seven were representative of a much broader, deeper movement.

The BAD Day 7 acquittals follow not-guilty verdicts in two previous trials of activists who stood in the House gallery in 1999 and again in 2000 to protest congressional control over the District’s budget. These follow a series of arrests and trials, going back to the early 1990s, of local citizens fighting for full democratic rights. How many federal tax dollars are being spent trying unsuccessfully to intimidate the movement can only be guessed at – a Freedom of Information Act request for these figures filed in March 2001 by Stand Up! was ignored by the U.S. Department of Justice.

What is clear from this most recent victory is that the movement for budget autonomy and full democracy for the District is not going away. And the next Oct. 1 is only two months away.

***

Bill Mosley is a member of the Stand Up! For Democracy in D.C. Coalition. Contact him at billmosley@verizon.net.

Copyright 2004, The Common Denominator