UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Specters of '68: Protest, Policing, and Urban Space Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5fw554xm Author Sagan, Hans Nicholas Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Specters of '68: Protest, Policing, and Urban Space by Hans Nicholas Sagan A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Galen Cranz, Chair Professer C. Greig Crysler Professor Richard Walker Summer 2015 Sagan Copyright page Sagan Abstract Specters of '68: Protest, Policing, and Urban Space by Hans Nicholas Sagan Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture University of California, Berkeley Professor Galen Cranz, Chair Political protest is an increasingly frequent occurrence in urban public space. During times of protest, the use of urban space transforms according to special regulatory circumstances and dictates. The reorganization of economic relationships under neoliberalism carries with it changes in the regulation of urban space. Environmental design is part of the toolkit of protest control. Existing literature on the interrelation of protest, policing, and urban space can be broken down into four general categories: radical politics, criminological, technocratic, and technical- professional. Each of these bodies of literature problematizes core ideas of crowds, space, and protest differently. This leads to entirely different philosophical and methodological approaches to protests from different parties and agencies. This paper approaches protest, policing, and urban space using a critical-theoretical methodology coupled with person-environment relations methods. This paper examines political protest at American Presidential National Conventions. Using genealogical-historical analysis and discourse analysis, this paper examines two historical protest event-sites to develop baselines for comparison: Chicago 1968 and Dallas 1984. Two contemporary protest event-sites are examined using direct observation and discourse analysis: Denver 2008 and St. Paul 2008. Results show that modes of protest policing are products of dominant socioeconomic models of society, influenced by local policing culture and historical context. Each of the protest event-sites studied represents a crisis in policing and the beginning of a transformation in modes of protest policing. Central to protest policing is the concept of territorial control; means to achieve this control vary by mode of protest policing, which varies according to dominant socioeconomic model. Protesters used a variety of spatial strategies at varying degrees of organization. Both protesters and police developed innovations in spatial practice in order to make their activities more effective. This has significant consequences for professionalized urban design. Both protester and policing spatial innovation involves the tactical reorganization and occupation of urban space. As urban space plays a constituent role in protest and policing, environmental designers must be aware of the political consequences of their designs. Sagan 1 Dedicated to Inger Cecilie Nordhagen and Jonas Berkeley Sagan Nordhagen. Sagan Table of Contents: Introduction iii Chapter 1 Background 1 Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework 6 Chapter 3 Methodology and Methods 23 Chapter 4 Literature Review 33 Chapter 5 Chicago 1968: "The Police are There to Preserve Disorder" 74 Chapter 6 Dallas 1984: "Morning in America" 101 Chapter 7 Denver 2008: “We Get Up Early, to BEAT the Crowds” 117 Chapter 8 St. Paul 2008: “Welcome, Rich White Oligarchs!” 165 Chapter 9 Conclusion 189 Chapter 10 Epilogue: Events since 2008 220 Bibliography 224 All photos by author unless otherwise credited. Sagan i Thanks: My dissertation committee chair and advisor, Galen Cranz. Dissertation Committee members Greig Crysler and Dick Walker. My additional Ph.D. exam commitee members, Jean-Pierre Protzen and Nezar Al-Sayyad. The University of California Dean's Normative Time Fellowship Committee. Lois Ito-Koch and Sara McCarthy. Mimi Sullivan and Alberto Bertoli. Bob and Maggie Klein. My parents, Nancy Parrinello and John Sagan. My grandparents, Nicholas and Pearl Parrinello, and John and Erna Sagan. My in-laws, Per Jonas and Inger Karin Nordhagen. Alan Moreira, my host and research assistant in Denver. Bernie McNally and Linda Passon-McNally, my hosts in St. Paul. Again, John Sagan, my research assistant in St. Paul. Marcus Breen. Dave Harris. Dwight and Pablo. Sagan ii Introduction: “In the past, we mastered riots by rifle and cannon. Today we use pick and trowel.” Anonymous Parisian builder in 1858.1 “We get up early, to BEAT the crowds” - Denver Police DNC commemorative t-shirt, 2008 Free and open speech is a fundamental right in democratic states. Whether in public or in private, the individual's right to open speech about political rule is well-protected in democracies. However, when people assemble in public spaces, and as a group vocally protest together, different forces and legalities come into play. Because any large group of people massed in an urban setting is not the normal state of affairs, these gatherings represent a potential threat to governing bodies. A mass political protest is only a few steps from a riot. At what point does a political demonstration become civil disobedience? What is the role of urban space in supporting or suppressing public political speech? How is public space used by demonstrators and regulators? What are the methods and goals of those who use and reorganize urban and public space? What role, if any, does the public-ness of public space have in affecting the beginnings, the processes, and the conclusions of protest? What are the implications or protest policing and crowd regulation for urban space? Mass protest has taken on new significance and new dimensions since the start of the first Gulf War. Prior to this, mass protest was usually related to specific protest issues, either on a local scale or national (specifically groups protesting apartheid in South Africa, nuclear disarmament, or poverty).2 However, protests since then take as their cue dissatisfaction and frustration with issues of greater scope. First, these protests are in reaction to large systems and multinational problems; globalized markets have also resulted globalized resistance. Second, the protests tend to target localized events, in particular international economic summits. These summits and meetings are localized embodiments of neoliberal regimes in the developed world, and protests are reactions against the deregulation of industry and retreat of the state under neoliberal economic policies. Based on surveys of recent literature, news reports, and white papers, mass protests are gaining in both size and frequency.3 While political protests in urban space are nothing new, the number and scale of mass assemblies for political purposes in public spaces has taken on new dimensions in the last decade. This increase in scale and scope of protests is accompanied by changing protest policing tactics. Spatial control tactics used against protesters worldwide, such as the “free-speech zone” and “kettling," are taking on similar characteristics worldwide. Perhaps the signature protest event of this new era was the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999, where an unprecedented 40,000 protesters clashed with police over a few days, resulting in mass beatings, arrests and property damage....along with new spatial tactics of policing as well as of protest. The next significant event came in 2003 in the protests in Miami against the Free Trade Area of the Americas conference, where police used a new model of enforcement against tens of thousand of protesters, deploying innovations in protest policing under 1 Jones 367. 2 Tonkiss, as well as Dellaporta, Peterson and Reiter. 3 Ortiz et al tracks the increase in protest incidence across the globe from the period of 2006 to 2013, generally in response to economic issues. Global protest incidence grows steadily from 59 events in 2006 to 111 in the first half of 2013. The Global Database of Events, Language and Tone tracks incidences of protests and other events and shows a steady increase since 1979. Powers and Vogele explore an increase in protest movements from the Civil Rights era through the middle 1990s, Brenner and Theodore discuss the increasing number of protest events against neoliberalism (1979-2002) (4), and Sandine discusses crowd events from across American history, with particular focus on assembly rights in the 21st century (Chs. 6-9). Further evidence is in the sheer record-breaking scale of protest events since 2003. Sagan iii what is now called the “Miami Model of Protest Policing.”4 Police used this approach again in 2004 in Los Angeles and New York City during the presidential conventions, and French police used similar tactics against protests across France in 2006. A significant element in the organization of urban political protest and the enforcement thereof has been the internationalization of methods of both protest and response. The largest protests occurring under neoliberal governance has been in response to issues that affect several nations at once. These protests typically have occurred in response to economic or military plans made in the developed