“Buffer zone” bill threatens right to peaceful protest

To the editor,

For the past three months, our City Council District 11 representative Eric Dinowitz has been pushing legislation that could dismantle the right to peaceably protest in New York. For the sake of his future political career, unless he has plans to move to Florida or Texas, he should know that the majority of his constituents in the Bronx will not tolerate any restrictions on our First Amendment rights.

At the end of January, Mr. Dinowitz introduced his “buffer zone” bill, 175-B, which legally requires the NYPD to develop plans around setting up security perimeters in front of and around any “educational facility” where a student or community-based protest is taking place. He used the generic term “educational facility” which could be interpreted to include community centers, museums, libraries, and teaching hospitals as well.

After two months of lobbying his colleagues on the City Council, Mr. Dinowitz’s bill was passed, by a 30-19 margin. However, Mayor Zohran Mamdani in April vetoed the legislation, citing the repressive effects it would have on not only politically active college students but also labor and community organizers. His principled and intelligent decision is to be commended; it is why many of us campaigned for him in 2025.

But Council member Dinowitz is not done with his campaign that would degrade our First Amendment rights. It would also put in the shredder a half-century of CUNY bylaws, in particular Article XV, which states explicitly that all CUNY campuses “must protect students’ rights to free speech and peaceful assembly,” as long as these demonstrations “do not disrupt scheduled academic or administrative activities.” At the moment, he and other Council members are considering an override of Mayor Mamdani’s veto, for which the bill needs four more votes — a supermajority in City Council is 34.

As everyone knows, encircling peaceful student demonstrators with a phalanx of police officers and corralling them behind heavy iron barricades is the opposite of protection: it makes them feel like delinquents or even criminals, simply for standing up for their moral beliefs and political convictions. Even worse is that it kills their hope that through civic engagement their city and country could become a better place. It is a great way of taking them out of politics.

If you like the First Amendment, and believe that the government’s role is to protect free speech and peaceful assembly rather than disable it, give Mr. Dinowitz a call or email him and tell him to please stop what he’s doing: 718-549-7300 or dinowitz@council.nyc.gov.

It’s probably the case that Council member Dinowitz agrees that the Trump regime is trying to turn America into a totalitarian state, under which the Trump family and their billionaire friends have complete impunity to further plunder the federal treasury and carry out more of their criminal schemes. So we must ask: Why would someone representing the Bronx, not Florida or Texas, want to make it easier for them to achieve their evil plan?

JONATHAN SCOTT