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Letter to the editor

Backwater attitudes can wash out road to future

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published July 27, 2004

Consider these recent events:

In January, the St. Petersburg City Council voted to move the city limits northward toward the community of Feather Sound, which the city wants to sweet-talk into being annexed one day.

In March, city leaders boasted at a news conference held at BayWalk that St. Petersburg had been named one of America's "most livable cities."

Earlier this month, the City Council approved plans for a developer on the northern end of the city. Explained member John Bryan: "I'm always going to argue for jobs in St. Petersburg."

All three seem especially ironic now, given that St. Petersburg is talking about arresting its citizens who voice their political opinions in the "wrong" place.

If the council proceeds at its Aug. 2 workshop with this ham-fisted attempt to create two protest-free zones at BayWalk and Tropicana Field, it will be revealing St. Petersburg's true colors.

You see, boys and girls, you can't have it both ways.

You can't claim to be a desirable, "livable" city that hopes to attract high-quality employers and a well-educated work force, and yet at the same time act like it's still a small backwater burg and you get to be the Boss Hogg.

You can aspire to be a vibrant, modern city, or you can be Mayberry R.F.D., but you can't be both.

"One of America's Most Livable Cities - As Long As You Shut Up and Know Your Place."

My intent here, rather than waxing about the First Amendment, which others have done quite eloquently, is to target the city closer to its heart - that is, to point out the risk to the city's civic ambitions.

Take the annexation of Feather Sound, for example. It is one of Mayor Rick Baker's fondest long-term hopes.

But Feather Sound, of all places, should be painfully sensitive to the idea of the government cracking down on citizen protest. After all, the residents there did a beautiful job of using their First Amendment rights in recent months to protest the shafting they got over the expansion of the county airport.

So Feather Sound folks, be warned: You are being wooed by a city and a mayor that want your houses on its tax rolls, and your dollars in its pocket - but not your opinions. Once we get you, you'd better protest only in city-approved locations.

The commercial explosion in downtown St. Petersburg in recent years is amazing and beautiful. But having lots of people come to a downtown means having all sorts of people come, not just the kind of people that the government approves of.

The "public safety" excuse for kicking protesters off the sidewalk in front of BayWalk, and making them stay across the street from Tropicana Field, is a clumsy falsehood, or if you prefer, a lie.

If the City Council were truly concerned about public safety at BayWalk, it would simply close off to traffic that one block of Second Avenue North, where pedestrians must bravely cross a river of SUVs.

As for baseball games, if 8,000 or 10,000 or (when the Yankees are in town) 30,000 people are making their way across 16th Street against the lights and outside the crosswalks, and a couple dozen protesters on the sidewalk are griping about the war, I am pretty sure of which crowd is the bigger hazard.

Nope. This isn't about public safety. This is about Decent People feeling uncomfortable because Those People are out on the street being disagreeable again. Why can't Those People just go away?

A few days ago, President Bush visited Tampa. There was a great anecdote about that visit in the paper. A team of gymnasts from Lubbock, Texas, happened to be in town. When they saw anti-Bush protesters, they got mad - so they did the American thing and went out and staged a counterprotest.

"The reason they have a right to stand over there," one of the gymnasts sneered of the other side, "is because we fought wars."

And he was exactly right. We fought wars - and are fighting them still - so American citizens will remain free to say what they think.

Except, maybe, in front of BayWalk and Tropicana Field in little old St. Petersburg, Fla.

[Last modified July 27, 2004, 01:00:27]