They came by the dozens to the Littleton City Center on Monday night. They proudly wore anti-Wal- Mart T-shirts and stickers. Many spoke. Not a one tried to intimidate. Still, in their civilized and civic-minded debate, they each made fools of overbearing politicians and bureaucrats who had tried to stifle the most fundamental American right.
Last week, the powers-that-be in Littleton decreed that opponents of a Wal-Mart on Santa Fe Drive could not wear anti-Wal-Mart T-shirts or carry protest signs to a public hearing. By order of city leaders, police at a rezoning hearing ordered people to take off their T-shirts and stickers or face arrest. It took embarrassing publicity and the threat of a lawsuit to make the city relent at a continuation of the hearing Monday night. Given the open-ended – and perhaps unconstitutional – rule the city applied at the first hearing, it’s not clear that Littleton’s leaders get it. The rule lets the city manager restrict free expression any way he wants if he says it is “necessary for the administration, protection and maintenance … of public buildings and property.”
What distinguishes this country from the rest of the world is not free-market capitalism that lets tax-hungry towns cram big-box retailers between neighborhoods and a park. It is the ability of folks to passionately agree to disagree.
Sure, free speech comes with the responsibility to respect others. But in Littleton, a quaint burg in Denver’s southwest suburbs, leaders didn’t even give citizens the benefit of the doubt.
That’s more important than whether Wal-Mart comes to town.
“Last week, the core group (of opponents) decided that speakers would not wear their T-shirts because we didn’t want to be in-your-face obnoxious,” Wal-Mart opponent Debbie Brinkman said. “We asked non-speakers to wear T-shirts in silent protest. No one was rabble-rousing.”
Nevertheless, she said, the cops told anyone with a T-shirt on to take it off.
It was not the officers’ fault. They followed orders from the bully-boys running Littleton. Left to deal with bad behavior instead of management’s paranoia, the cops had nothing to do Monday.
Hours of testimony were a call to sleep, not a call to arms. They included endless dissections of Littleton’s comprehensive plan and such narcotic bureaucratese as “sales tax leakage.”
Boring? You bet. That’s the only way democracy works. Everybody gets a say.
After watching T-shirt-wearing pals rebuffed last week, Brinkman and dozens of other good citizens dressed to protest Monday night. They spoke while wearing T-shirts or stickers that said “Littleton Against Wal-Mart” or “Save South Platte Park. Stop Littleton Wal-Mart.”
The park, a crown jewel of the city’s recreation system, sits beside the proposed Wal-Mart site. So does Brinkman’s Wolhurst Landing neighborhood. She spoke for 200 of her neighbors when she told the planning commission, “This site is sandwiched between two low-profile residential neighborhoods, a busy highway on the east and South Platte Park on the west. Who would care if this (site) was rezoned and a huge cement monument to low prices was built?”
“No one wants a semi-truck turnaround outside their bedroom window,” Brinkman added. “Littleton would be … the only Wal-Mart in the metropolitan area where the neighbors’ back doors are closer to Wal-Mart’s front door than the handicapped parking spaces.”
If that kind of attitude comes with a T-shirt or a protest sign, Littleton’s leaders should live with it. Just like Brinkman and hundreds of other Wal-Mart opponents may have to live with an intrusive, big-box retailer.
If the City Council goes along with the planning staff’s recommendation and approves the Wal-Mart on Santa Fe, Brinkman and other foes will try to put the issue on the ballot. If a majority of Littleton voters decides they want Wal-Mart, Brinkman said, she won’t be happy, but at least she’ll know that she did what Americans are supposed to do.
As long as they keep an open-ended censorship rule in their code, the same cannot be said of Littleton’s leaders.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
