The hoopla in San Francisco surrounding the forthcoming Olympic Torch runner and the promised demonstrations focused on China’s human rights’ abuses reminded me of an earlier Olympic protest against human rights abuses — except those abuses were far closer to home.

In 1980, the Winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid, New York. As the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) contemplated housing the large number of (mostly white) athletes who would be descending on the tiny Alpine village, they went to Congress asking for federal money to build temporary quarters. Congress responded that the federal government was not in the business of providing public money for private enterprises (we weren’t East Germany, after all), and advised that if the Committee could suggest a permanent public after-use, then the money might be forthcoming.

In record time — working closely with the Federal Bureau of Prisons — the USOC came up with their suggested “public” after-use: a new federal prison. Without the Congressional oversight that had always been required for such a massive project, Congress appropriated the money, borrowed a blueprint from an existing federal prison complex, clear cut a large swath of forest between Lake Placid and Saranac Lake, and construction began.

At that time, I coordinated a project headquartered in Washington, D.C. called the National Moratorium on Prison Construction (with our West Coast office in San Francisco). Along with affiliate groups in New York, we launched a campaign to focus attention on the irony and inhumanity of U.S. tax dollars to pay for an “Olympic Village” — complete with discothèque, movie theater, fancy food services and many other amenities — for the 1100, mostly white, European athletes who would first occupy the village temporarily, only to be followed by its more permanent residents, young, mostly black and Latino men from the urban centers of New York City and Philadelphia who would be imprisoned there, once the complex was stripped of all the warm trappings of celebrity and left barren and cold.

We called our campaign Stop The Olympic Prison, which made a convenient acronym: S.T.O.P., and we designed a brilliantly colored poster showing a black arm thrust through the Olympic rings under the slogan, Stop The Olympic Prison.

Soon, we received a letter from the USOC threatening to sue us for copyright infringement if we did not “cease and desist.” Far from ceasing and desisting, we launched our own pre-emptive strike: we sued the USOC ourselves for an “anticipatory breach” of our First Amendment rights. Just before the Games began, a federal judge ruled in our favor, noting that there was little likelihood of anyone confusing our poster with the corporate goals of the Olympic Committee, and opining that they must believe that Zeus himself, from atop Mount Olympus, had given them exclusive rights to the word “Olympic.”

But then came the Olympic Torch Runner through the streets of Washington, D.C. and onto the steps of the U.S. Capitol in a welcoming ceremony sponsored by the Senate. My offices were only a few blocks from the building, and on the morning of that ceremony (to which the public had been invited), I arrived with a banner that we had prepared to take to Lake Placid and display during the Games. The banner read: “OLYMPIC TORCH = FREEDOM, OLYMPIC PRISON = SLAVERY.” I stood at the back of the crowd so as not to obstruct anyone’s view, and raised the banner.

Soon, a Capitol Hill Police captain approached and inquired if I had a permit to demonstrate. I answered that I did not, but asked if the many others in the crowd with signs welcoming the torch runner had permits. The Captain told me they did not, but that my sign was “not in the spirit of the ceremony,” and ordered me to put it down. If I refused, he said, he would have me arrested. I replied that I believed the First Amendment protected my speech, and that if he arrested me, I would sue. Again, he ordered me to relinquish the banner. Again, I refused. Two other officers then arrested me and took me into custody. I was released some hours after the ceremony ended, and charges against me were dropped. I sued.

While our campaign to Stop The Olympic Prison was unsuccessful (today, more than twelve hundred young men, mostly men of color, are incarcerated there), my lawsuit succeeded. The result may be instructive both for those contemplating how they might express their opposition to the upcoming Olympic Games in China, and for the government that hopes to impose “time, place and manner” restrictions on such demonstrations. In a word, what my case determined is that where there is “no obstruction of pedestrian or vehicular traffic” by a single demonstrator (who does) “not threaten or provoke violence,” there is no right to impose the kinds of restrictions allowed on larger, organized gatherings.

San Francisco officials might also want to consider this from the court’s decision: “Freedom of expression would not truly exist if the right could be exercised only in an area that a benevolent government has provided as a safe haven for crackpots.” (That would be me…) “(W)e do not confine the permissible exercise of First Amendment rights to a telephone booth or the four corners of a pamphlet…”

A word to the wise…

New America Media contributor Michael A. Kroll is the founding director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.