[Mitai-announce] Charges against Smith dropped, 1st Amend still insecure...

[Aimee L Smith]

Thank you to everyone who wrote to MIT administrators to ask that 
arrests not be used as a means to silence dissent on a university 
campus or the public sidewalks that surround it.  

The fraudulent charges against me have been dropped and President 
Vest assured us would seek such action from the DA handling the case.  
Vest agreed that there were no guidelines that would restrict 
dissemination of literature on graduation day, nevertheless in what
appears to be in the interest of legal damage control, Vest asserts 
that the police acted properly even as they arrested someone for a 
crime that never occurred...   while it is likely that President Vest 
was instructed by lawyers to make this bizarre claim, it still is a 
bad sign for free expression and political discourse on the MIT campus.  

Will arrest be a means for silencing unpopular points of view in the 
future, even when there is no foundation warranting arrest?  Will 
"security" be a blanket pretext for hauling off anyone who doesn't 
promote the corporate line?  These are important questions that 
remain to be answered, and I urge all of you who understand the need 
for a democracy (and science for that matter) to have spaces where 
discussion and exchange of ideas can freely take place to continue 
to put pressure on the MIT administration.  The MIT administration
must ensure that the rights of all students, foreign and domestic,
to express opinions will be honored and protected on this campus.  
Those officers who attempt to trample on those rights and assault
women in our community in the process should be the ones arrested, 
not those engaging in such protected activity.  And those 
administrators who put "corporate aesthetics" over the 1st amendment 
on graduation day by ordering the MIT corporate officers to "get them 
out of there" should be relieved of their duties.

Thanks again for all the solidarity.  I am enclosing a press release
for more information.  There will of course be no proceedings in
Court tomorrow.

Sincerely,
Aimee Smith

PS more on the graduation day silencing of four leafletters and the
step-up in the climate of repression around town can be found at
http://web.mit.edu/thistle
and the brand new Somerville/Cambridge community newspaper, The Bridge.
http://www.BridgeNews.org

and the SJC page: http://web.mit.edu/justice will be updated very soon!

press release 7/6/04

All charges dropped against Aimee Smith

A month after being arrested while distributing flyers at MIT,    former Green-Rainbow city council candidate Aimee Smith has learned that all charges against her have been dropped. 
She says she was "not surprised" that her case was dropped, and not satisfied, either: "We are looking into ways to seek redress to insure that MIT will never again use false arrest to silence people."
Smith was one of four members of the Social Justice Cooperative chased off the sidewalk for handing out flyers on June 4, the morning of MIT's graduation ceremonies. The others were Katherine Gibson, Suzanne Nguyen, and Anne Pollock. 
On the very day of the arrests, the Middlesex County D.A.'s office offered to drop all charges if Smith would pay court costs.   She rejected that condition. 
MIT President Charles ("Chuck") Vest had backed away from the case, after receiving protests from students, faculty, and community activists.   
On Friday, June 11, a delegation met with Vest in his office, asking that MIT affirm free speech rights and repudiate the commencement day actions of the campus police.    
A week later Vest wrote Smith that MIT would seek dismissal of the charges against her. He suggested talks to work out rules for leafleting, but offered no apology for the graduation day actions of campus police.
In a June 29 response to people who had contacted his office about the incident, Vest maintained that "the MIT Police acted properly," even though "there had been no common understanding about where leafleting could take place." He said that MIT had asked the D.A.'s office to dismiss charges, and that "they informed us that they would not prosecute.."
There is good reason to doubt that charges of disorderly conduct and disrupting a school assembly would have held up in a trial. 
City and state laws clearly give citizens the right to circulate on the sidewalks. The only exception would be an emergency situation, like a fire, or obstructive loitering, including drunkenness. (Section 9.09.060 Municipal Codes). 
Citizens also have the right of "peaceful persuasion", "by printing or otherwise".."unless such persuasion is accompanied by injury or threat of injury" (Mass. General Laws, Chapter 149, Section 24).   As long as they don't just stand still and block pedestrians, they may rely on this law.
Smith was not charged with obstructing the sidewalks.  And Nguyen has stated, "Neither Aimee nor I were yelling or acting in a violent manner" prior to the arrest. 
Gibson recalls that when she and Pollock were ordered by MIT police to stop handing out flyers, "we were standing a few feet away from a vendor on Mass Ave.   I think the contrast between the right to 'free commerce' and the right to 'free speech' speaks volumes about MIT priorities."  

[458 words]

Bill Cunningham