Free Speech In Pittsburgh

When retired Pittsburgh steelworker Bill Neel learned that President George W. Bush was coming to town last year, he … made a hand-lettered sign ? The Bush family must surely love the poor! They have made so many of us! ? and headed for a road where the motorcade would pass. But he never got to display his sign for Bush to see. As he stood among milling groups of Bush supporters, he was approached by a local police detective and told that he and his sister had to move to a “free-speech area” for protesters, on orders of the U.S. Secret Service … “It looked more like a concentration camp than a free-speech area to me, so I said, `I’m not going in there. I thought the whole country was a free-speech area.'” After refusing several times to go to the area, he was handcuffed and arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct.