Chalk Writing Stirs Free Speech Debate at County Board

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

In response to concerns about free speech, the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors recently voted to change a county ordinance governing chalk writing in Milwaukee County Parks.

During their meeting on Thursday, supervisors voted to remove chalk writing on county-owned streets and sidewalks from the county’s graffiti ordinance. The sponsor of the resolution, Sup. Juan Miguel Martinez, said local political activists were using chalk to write messages during protests against the Israeli war in Gaza and that people who disagreed with them were calling the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to complain about it.

For the activists, allowing chalking in the parks was a free speech issue, one Martinez supports. But while discussing the issue with colleagues on the board, Martinez also noted that chalk is easily washed away with water and is already used in parks for nonpolitical activities. “Kids draw with chalk to do their hopscotch,” he said. The resolution drafted by Martinez allows “water-soluble chalk on horizontal, publicly owned surfaces exposed to the elements.”

At an earlier meeting of the Committee on Judiciary, Law Enforcement and General Services on June 16, local activists said treating chalk as graffiti would amount to a waste of public resources and an infringement of protected free speech. They also recounted that the sheriff’s office had been called on them while they were writing chalk messages.

“At a time when people are visibly processing grief, anger, and moral urgency about ongoing violence and suffering in the world, respectful public expression is not something to be criminalized because it is inconvenient or uncomfortable,” Ashley Doelger told the committee.

“As others have stated, for years now we have experienced Zionist harassment for exercising our free speech rights and writing pro-Palestine, pro-liberation, antiwar messaging in chalk on a county park pedestrian foot bridge,” said Heba Muhammad, an organizer with Milwaukee 4 Palestine.

At the full board meeting on Thursday, Sup. Sheldon Wasserman, chair of the Committee on Parks and Recreation, expressed support but also said he wondered why pro-Palestinian activists were pushing the change. He claimed the sort of political speech being allowed by the resolution is legal in Israel but not allowed by groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization. He then said the resolution is “pro-American, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian at the same time.”

Sup. Martinez responded saying the activists are using the chalk to spread messages supporting the Palestinian people, not the organizations Wasserman named.

Sup. Jack Eckblad said he supported the resolution not only for its expansion of allowable speech in county parks but also because “we need to normalize disagreement in this country. We need to normalize dialogue.”

Not everyone supported the idea, though, and not necessarily for political reasons either. Sup. Shawn Rolland asked his colleagues to set aside the “issues of the day” and instead consider “what do we want our county parks to look like?” Rolland noted that once chalk is not considered graffiti in parks it will be protected by the First Amendment, which also protects hate speech and racial slurs.

People come to parks to escape political debates and toxic language, and the chalking ordinance turns the parks into another platform for it, he said.

Corporation Counsel Scott Brown told supervisors Milwaukee County Parks will now have to decide whether to remove something if they receive a complaint about a chalk writing somewhere. Restrictions on First Amendment-protected speech must be content neutral and cannot take one side against another, he explained. He also said the sheriff’s office has not been issuing tickets for chalk graffiti. “My understanding is that it has not been enforced at all in the past decade or so,” he said.

The board voted 13-2 in favor of the ordinance change. Supervisors Rolland and Steve Taylor voted against it. Sup. Felesia Martin, Priscilla E. Coggs-Jones and Deanna Alexander were not present for the meeting.

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