Time was when Bill de Blasio loved protesters on the street — as long as they were carrying signs against someone else, particularly then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
Indeed, back in 2011, during Occupy Wall Street’s squat-in at Zuccotti Park, the then-public advocate called on Bloomberg to “stop the schizophrenia and just make clear that we’re gonna respect their First Amendment rights.”
That was then.
Mayor de Blasio, it seems, doesn’t want any critical pickets marring his carefully planned photo-ops.
Last Friday, sign-holding residents showed up at a mayoral unveiling of the post-Sandy Rockaway boardwalk — and were promptly banished to a “free-speech zone” hundreds of feet away, reports DNAInfo.
The mayor’s office confirmed that such zones have become standard at de Blasio events. They are, it explained, “a designated place for signs and chanting so that people can do that if they’d like without blocking events for the audience.”
It’s not as if the few Rockaway protesters were all that confrontational.
One sign called for more bike access to the new boardwalk; another, for a speedier return of the Rockaway Beach Rail Line and ferry.
Yet the mayor’s folks still ordered them to a roped-off section down a set of stairs from the boardwalk.
It’s nice that de Blasio is so concerned about everyone having an unobstructed view of his ribbon-cuttings and other vital events, but what happened to his old First Amendment concerns?
As recently as last year, in approving an $18 million settlement of lawsuits stemming from protests at the 2004 GOP convention, de Blasio vowed “a very different view about how we respect people’s right to express themselves.”
A different view — as long as the mayor doesn’t have to have them in his view.