Evangelical protest at market tests civic speech rules

Aurora Fleming is nervous about this weekend’s Saturday Market.

Fleming, who attended the last market with her partner and teenage daughter, was shocked by a group of evangelical Christians who set up at the street corners at Oak Street and Eighth Avenue, off of the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza. The group carried signs against abortion, including graphic images of fetuses, a large cross labeled “GRACE” and “WRATH,” and used speakers and megaphones to tell passersby they needed to repent or be damned.

Nonviolent protests at the city-owned spaces, like the streets surrounding the Saturday Market and the adjacent Lane County Farmers Market, are constitutionally protected free speech. But for vendors and attendees like Fleming, whose partner argued with a protester before realizing he was being recorded with a body camera, the line between protected speech and an intervention-worthy disruption is a thin one.

“It’s not a peaceful protest when they’re screaming harmful things at other folks,” Fleming said. 

‘God deserves to be worshipped there’

Protests are nothing new to the market, which recently celebrated its 55th anniversary as a public square and gathering place for all things Eugene. But last Saturday, May 17, there were more Christian protesters than usual, with members of five or six Oregon churches visiting for the seventh annual Southern Oregon Evangelism Conference and having protested at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Springfield the day before.

It was a busy day, with the market’s Founder’s Day celebration falling on the weekend of the Big 10 conference track and field meet. (Ryan Clark, a pastor at Roseburg’s Reformed Baptist Church of Douglas County, said the timing was because of the church conference, and not planned to coincide with those two events.) Body camera footage from some conference members were later posted on Facebook, celebrating the event as successful outreach.

Clark, an attendee at the evangelism conference, said he didn’t consider the presence at the market a true protest, but rather an important piece of outreach ministry — despite how confrontational the message is.

“If we believe, and we do believe, that God deserves to be worshipped in the Eugene Saturday Market, God deserves to be worshipped there and we go worship Him even if nobody else is happy with it,” Clark said. “If God is happy with it, then we are happy.”

Renee Thompson, the marketing manager for the Eugene Saturday Market, said that the market did not know the group was coming. She said that evangelical Christians protesting at the market, including last weekend, regularly neglect guidelines for petitioners, canvassers and buskers, including to be courteous and not use sound amplification. The top priority is making sure no one is blocking traffic.

“They’re expressing their First Amendment rights,” Thompson said. “We’re not really in the business to go against anyone’s protected rights. However, all we ask is that people are safe.”

The technical line for intervention is if the protest disrupts the market or breaks out into violence. The Eugene Police Department said that when it responds to calls about protest activity at the market, officers intervene only if there is criminal behavior. 

“What is being said through the megaphone and what is being depicted on a sign is not considered by the police in determining whether the person is acting in a prohibited manner,” EPD public information director Melinda McLaughlin wrote in an email. “Similarly, we can’t consider the reaction a person’s speech (spoken or signage) invokes in the listener/observer in determining whether the person is acting in a prohibited manner.”

McLaughlin wrote that the police’s role, without a crime to respond to, would be to “likely engage in dialogue with market staff, vendors, protesters, and market attendees, to answer questions and de-escalate potential confrontations.”

When does a protest become a disruption?

At the market, protests are as seasonal as the produce. Good weather and high foot traffic mean a higher likelihood of protests, said Orion Lawrenz, the program and marketing manager for the Lane County Farmers Market at the following Tuesday market.

The staff knows to stay on their toes for raucous debate as the season warms up. Lawrenz said that last year, it grew so heated that market staff received training in de-escalation and conflict resolution to better respond in the moment.

“Unfortunately, police just won’t do anything besides have a presence,” they said. “They can’t actually do anything because it’s free speech, even if it’s violent, even if it’s hateful.”

Thompson, from the Saturday Market, said the values of free speech can be in conflict with the market’s goal of inclusion and community for vendors and attendees.

“When you have an LGBTQ business owner two booths away from a preacher telling the public that being in the LGBT community is a sin… this is their workplace,” she said. “It creates this situation of discomfort.”

Thompson detailed the market’s safety provisions, it has its own security staff and onsite crew, as well as strategies for market staff covering everything from missing pets to terror attacks.

One potential marker for disruption is the municipal noise code. The code prohibits sound-amplifying equipment in public spaces that leaves noise “plainly audible” at least 50 feet away from the device, unless authorized via permit.

“Be loud in the rest of town,” said Alfredo Gormezano, a longtime attendee of the market who was at the Tuesday Lane County Farmers Market. He said any protesters, including a recent pro-Palestinian protest he described as disruptive, should strive to be unintrusive. “Here, vendors are trying to talk to people.”

McLaughlin from EPD said that the Saturday Market is a Downtown Activity Zone permitted event, so any amplified sound on the market property (unless authorized) must not interfere with the event itself. 

Additionally, adjacent amplified sound to disrupt a permitted event could be a violation of municipal code against interfering with an authorized activity within the Downtown Activity Zone. She pointed to the example of someone using a megaphone to speak and drown out music at a concert permitted in the zone.

Thompson said that previous decibel readings taken by a stage technician at Saturday Markets with loud protesters were high, but that the local government would have to intervene.

There was no permit for the Southern Oregon Evangelism Conference’s presence; Clark said that speakers and megaphones were individual choices when preaching, not a centralized audio system. He argued that the audio equipment was protected by free speech because in an amplified world, preachers needed to amplify their own messages to be heard.

Legally, he pointed to a 1948 Supreme Court decision, Saia v. New York, which ultimately held that a town ordinance requiring sound permits for sound amplification was unconstitutional, as it operated as a prior restraint on free speech. 

The body cameras, he said, were used by some members for social media livestreaming to congregants who could not attend and to have video evidence if a confrontation did escalate. Clark said that he personally thinks the graphic images of the fetuses “are terrible,” but said using it was less sinful than abortion and served to get the message across, as did directly telling people they’re going to hell.

Rhea Gates, a farm assistant for Lane County Farmers Market vendor Wild Child, was at the Tuesday market encouraging customers who brought up the last market to document complaints with the staff. She said she’s seen customers turn around from the market on days with loud protests, and suggested an open community forum or a table for religious organizations to engage market attendees from.

Osana Waterstone, who owns and operates Wild Child with his wife, Alva, was at the market on Saturday and spent hours with employees listening to the preaching, having recently moved to a table closer to the intersection where the group set up. Multiple customers on Saturday apologized that they had to listen for hours. 

Waterstone said that every single time there is a loud protest at the market, the number of customers decreases. Wild Child has asked the police to have protesters move or leave the area, to no avail, and he wanted to know: How many vendors’ signatures would the city or police need to claim that something is a disruption?

“You’re free to speak the way you want, as long as it’s not insulting or negatively impacting the people around you,” he said. “I think in this case, that’s not really what’s happening.”