By Michael Lyle, Nevada Current
This piece was originally published in the Nevada Current.
With the “No Kings” rally returning this weekend bringing thousands out to protest President Donald Trump’s administration, Beth Osborne, an organizer with the grassroots movement Indivisible, expects bigger crowds in Las Vegas, as well as other cities across the country, than in the two demonstrations earlier this year.
But one thing about the protest in Downtown Las Vegas will be the same: Demonstrators will again be kept off the streets themselves and confined to sidewalks, in part because of the high cost of permits.
Jacob Valentine, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Nevada, worried that high permitting costs are being put in place “to try to limit First Amendment activity.”
“I think what the city needs to remember is that this is people’s First Amendment rights and their right to protest,” he said. “If they want to be involved and make sure those protests go a certain way they need to be more accommodating to people.”
Indivisible is organizing the “No Kings” rally, one of several taking place in Southern Nevada, Saturday at 11 a.m. in front of the Federal Courthouse, the same location the rally took place in June.
In the last few months, Trump has sent National Guard to numerous U.S. cities, told military leaders that cities will be used as training grounds to combat “the invasion from within” and ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute political enemies. All these actions have pushed the country “so much past the line of fascism,” Osborne said.
—“I think this is a defining moment in this country, the city and this world to ask which side of history are you going to be on?” she said.
Beth Osborne
Organizer, Indivisible
“I think this is a defining moment in this country, the city and this world to ask which side of history are you going to be on?” she said.
Though they want to take to the streets to engage in their constitutional rights to protests, Osborne is aware that while the Vegas heat has cooled, current political and cultural temperatures can run hot.
Osborne said Indivisible has had numerous conversations with Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and City of Las Vegas officials to help ensure everything goes smoothly.
As they sought to get a permit and inquired about the costs to shut down the streets, which could limit some interactions with law enforcement and allow participants easier movement among and within the crowd, Osborne said they were told it would cost $20,000.
“It would have been great if we could have closed down the street,” she said. “The planning for that and the type of money that that takes is just not something a small grassroots group” can afford.
When asked about the amount by Nevada Current, LVMPD said it wasn’t sure where the figure came from, and officials didn’t “recall giving number cost for staffing” to organizers, said Sergeant Jakob Shallenberger, a spokesman for LVMPD.
To obtain a basic permit without shutting down the street costs $265 according to Jace Radke, a spokesman for the City of Las Vegas. But that still restricts organizers to stay on the sidewalks.
“If a street is being closed there will need to be a barricade plan ($50 city fee) and the organizers will have to pay the cost of the barricades through a barricade company,” Radke said. “The Metro Police Special Events team reviews all special event permit applications, and they determine if there are additional security needs.”
Radke said the $20,000 figure didn’t come from the city. LVMPD said while it does coordinate with the city “I don’t know how the city calculates the cost of a permit or staffing needs,” Shallenberger said.
Meanwhile, when it comes to being protest-friendly, Las Vegas is “better than some cities, but there is more work to be done,” said Valentine with the ACLU.
“The city and law enforcement could always be doing a better job to accommodate First Amendment protestors,” he said.
At the last protest there were nearly 100 arrests, though the overwhelming majority were dropped. The ACLU of Nevada at the time said a majority of those arrested were for things like sitting on the sidewalk.
LVMPD Sheriff Kevin McMahill told 8 News Now in a recent interview that most of the charges dropped were “partly our fault because there are so many people getting arrested in a chaotic situation.” He said the LVMPD is looking to resubmit evidence against those arrested seeking further legal action.
“It’s telling that there were 90 citations at a protest and … less than five are going through and being tried,” Valentine said. “All the rest have been dismissed. I think it’s telling that there might be a need for the city to accommodate protests of this size.”
In addition to legal observers, Indivisible recruits volunteer “safety marshals” to help ensure people stay on sidewalks and there are clear pathways for people to walk. The group also relies on “de-escalators that have been trained in very specific techniques of how to bring the temperature down,” Osborne said.
“I think tensions are higher, certainly, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that we create a safe event,” Osborne said. “We don’t want the police, you know, arresting people for exercising their First Amendment rights.”
In addition to the morning rally at the courthouse, there are another eight “No Kings” events scheduled throughout the state:
- 10 a.m. in Henderson;
- 4:30 p.m. in front of New York New York on the Strip;
- 10 a.m. in Mesquite;
- 10 a.m. in Pahrump;
- 10 a.m. in Hawthorne;
- 8:30 a.m. in Carson City;
- 11 a.m. in Reno;
- 12 p.m. in Elko.
“What we need is 3.5% of the population to engage in mass noncooperation and civil disobedience. Those are the kind of things that topple dictators,” Osborne said, citing a figure from historians and political scientists who study civil resistance movements. “And we certainly got a dictator wannabe to be sitting in the White House.”
