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Newburyport Mayor Officially Eliminates Free Speech

January 31, 2001

The mayor of Newburyport eliminated Free Speech last month.

She said, “Just because you allow people to speak on public property doesn’t mean that they can say what they want.”

She says she consulted her city solicitor but lawyers were only shaking their heads in disbelief. The town has been sued because it solicited residents to buy $60 bricks for a walkway and then removed two of the bricks which had inscriptions, “For All the Unborn Children” and “Jesus Loves You.”

The attorney for the two women who had bought the bricks told the Daily News, “The city doesn’t have to allow private individuals to put messages on bricks, but since the government allowed the brick walkway to be used for private expression, it can’t pick and choose.”

The woman who bought the “unborn” brick told the newspaper, “I lost a baby in the late part of my pregnancy. Because I came home from the hospital with only a baby blanket, because my daughter wasn’t born alive, that’s why my brick says ‘For All the Unborn Children.’ It was a closure for our family that the brick was there.” She said that the removal was due to somebody’s intolerance and a misinterpretation that her message was political.