‘Ace Mace’ April 5 demonstration scaled back due to permit denial

Activist and attorney William J. Hamilton III stood across the street from Credit One Stadium on the afternoon of Saturday, April 5, strapped on a black bulletproof vest, and donned a blue hard hat.

 

It was 1 p.m., and the Ace Mace Justice Reform rally Hamilton organized against outspoken U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace was about to begin.

 

Only three people had shown up so far.

 

Two women walked up carrying homemade signs, one made of cardboard that read “shame.”

 

Another woman, local civil rights activist Louise Brown, sat under a tree in a folding chair watching as spectators crossed Seven Farms Drive to attend the semifinals of the Charleston Open tennis tournament.

 

Hamilton originally envisioned a spectacle - 300 enthusiastic protestors marching on the sidewalk directly in front of Mace’s Daniel Island office three blocks away at the corner of River Landing and Island Park Drives – all waving signs and singing songs to grab the attention of the thousands of tennis fans, who were arriving on foot and by bus to the island.

 

But when the City of Charleston denied his event permit, citing safety concerns and a lack of police resources due to the Cooper River Bridge Run, Hamilton was forced to scale down the planned event.

 

“The City of Charleston is saying tourism is more important than freedom of speech,” Hamilton told South Carolina District Court Judge David C. Norton in an emergency hearing the day before the scheduled protest. 

 

In a memorandum to the court, City of Charleston lawyers said the denial was not political in nature, but due to “the unsafe location of the protest” and because of “the exhaustion of police resources on perhaps the busiest day of the year for the City of Charleston Police Department, the Saturday of the Cooper River Bridge, and the Credit One Tennis Tournament.” 

 

City officials said the event’s location on the sidewalk in front of 900 Island Park Drive has no curb or safety barrier to protect protestors from an unintentional or intentional car collision and said the majority of the city’s police force would be patrolling downtown and not available for the protest.

 

Judge Norton agreed.

 

With the ruling upheld, Hamilton held a smaller demonstration with 25 people or less.

 

The protest went on as planned, but not as Hamilton had hoped.

 

“These municipal decisions reduced freedom of speech in the City of Charleston from our planned demonstration of 300 people to a tiny, legal, but unpermitted gathering of less than 25 between an (Mediterranean) deli that savored of diversity and a tennis stadium which echoed the gladiatorial distractions of a declining Roman empire on Saturday,” Hamilton wrote to supporters on Tuesday. 

 

“There were 12 of us and one cardboard cutout of Nancy Mace wearing a chicken costume. Mace doesn’t want to hear us either.”

 

Hamilton said he plans another protest on Folly Road this weekend and will continue his fight against the city, but unlike this case, he may defer any future litigation to the hands of other supporters.

 

“I’m happy to listen. I’m too tired to talk anymore and I suspect Charleston is already a bit tired of listening,” Hamilton said in his Tuesday statement.