Homeless advocates decry Fremont Street treatment

Angela Soo

Friday, Aug. 24, 2001 | 11:31 a.m.

Homeless advocates say Fremont Street Experience officials challenged their First Amendment rights Thursday when security personnel tried to prevent them from distributing fliers calling for the immediate opening of the MASH village homeless shelter.

About 10 Homeless Advocacy Task Force supporters stood near the Golden Nugget hotel-casino on Las Vegas Boulevard, where they asked people to call Fremont Street Experience President Mark Paris to support the immediate opening of the MASH tent. The flier also included a phone number for Paris.

Freemont Street Experience is a cooperative entertainment district jointly funded by downtown hotels and the city of Las Vegas.

Franciscan friar David Buer, a homeless advocate, said security guards on bicycles arrived two hours after supporters began distributing the fliers.

The vice president of marketing and special events for the experience, Ester Carter, and the security manager, John Ruffner, arrived soon after.

"She (Carter) said the flier was a form of solicitation and that we were violating the city ordinance against soliciting," Buer said.

Carter and Ruffner could not be reached for comment.

U.S. District Court Judge David Hagen in April ruled that an ordinance putting a total ban on leafletting was unconstitutional, but he upheld that banning all forms of solicitation was reasonable.

"Leafletting doesn't entail all of the problems presented by solicitation. ... The distribution of literature does not require that the recipient stop in order to receive the message the speaker wished to convey; instead the recipient is free to read the message at a later time," Hagen said in April.

The flier also said the 175-bed Catholic Charities and 250-bed MASH Village shelters closed earlier this year, and that pressure from the city of Las Vegas led to the destruction of Tent City.

But Buer said authorities had a problem with the section that asked people to call Paris.

Fremont Street Experience officials left and allowed the task force to continue demonstrating, but four Metro bike officers arrived minutes after.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said the police officer's presence discouraged the task force from handing out the leaflet and compared the assembly to a union rally held just days before asking people to support granting legal status for immigrant workers.

"The union was treated in a polite and respectful manner by Fremont," Peck said. "The homeless are no different from the union. We should be treated with the same kind of respect."

After speaking with Fremont Street Experience attorney Tim Bice, Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the ACLU of Nevada, said the situation had apparently been solved.

"To me, this is clearly not a matter of solicitation," Lichtenstein said. "These people were not asking for money. They were asking people to support a cause. It was political speech, which is protected by the Constitution."

Said Bice, "My gut reaction is that it was a clear effort to obtain money, they simply use the word support in replacement of donation."

The task force is trying to raise $560,000 to reopen the emergency shelter at MASH Village for nine months. The task force is turning to the community and private sector for help.

The task force plans a similar rally Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., at the MGM Grand on Las Vegas Boulevard.