Hot Springs demonstration planned over Confederate statues

“Basically, free speech is protected no matter what the content is. What is not protected is going and bashing somebody in the head, that sort of thing.”

HOT SPRINGS, Ark.—The Confederate Square Group will hold a demonstration today on Arlington Lawn in Hot Springs National Park to show support for preserving monuments to Confederate history.

“After being in Charlottesville (Va.) and seeing the backlash and the tidal wave of monuments being destroyed and took down, I’m more determined now to have my rallies than ever,”

—Josie Fernandez, Hot Springs National Park superintendent

said James Brock, a Hot Springs man who organized and obtained a permit for the demonstration from the National Park Service.

Brock said today’s demonstration will not support neo-Nazism, white supremacy or white nationalism, but will focus on the preservation of monuments to Confederate history.

“We are a constitutionally based, free speech institution for all Americans, and the rights of all Americans, by the Constitution,” Brock said.

Brock said he attended last week’s rally in Charlottesville with a group who travels across the country in an effort to preserve Confederate monuments.

The group was given a permit to demonstrate on Arlington Lawn from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. today, and plans to hold its event from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. It is the third one of its kind to be held on Arlington Lawn in 2017.

“First Amendment activities, such as demonstrations at our national parks, are activities protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” Hot Springs National Park Superintendent Josie Fernandez said Thursday.

“The NPS adheres to the regulatory framework in 36 CFR 2.51. It is this provision that enables parks to accommodate First Amendment activity at designated spaces within the park, while also protecting park resources and values, and minimizing the impact on park visitors and park operations,” Fernandez said.

Section 2.51 states that demonstrations involving more than 25 persons are permissible by permit on federal lands, provided they do not involve the construction of stages, platforms or structures, or interfere with other activities held on the land.

“All requests for similar activities are treated equally. As long as permit criteria and requirements set forth

days. Rutledge didn’t write to Hutchinson until Thursday. Her spokesman didn’t know whether she had received a heads-up that a full set of drugs was again on-hand.”

“I’m not aware of any conversation that took place between the attorney general and the Department of Correction,” spokesman Judd Deere said. “There is not a requirement that we have drugs before sending a request to the governor that a date be set.”

Arkansas has 30 people on death row—all men with appeals at different stages. Since Greene’s are done, he is eligible to be executed. Jason McGehee also would be eligible for execution if Hutchinson denies a clemency recommendation he won in April.

Hutchinson spokesman J.R. Davis said Friday that the governor has not decided whether to grant McGehee mercy.

Greene was convicted in western Arkansas in the 1991 death of Sidney Jethro Burnett, who was stabbed and had his throat slit after being beaten with a can of hominy. Burnett and his wife had accused Greene of arson. McGehee, as a teenager, directed the beating and killing of a snitch in northern Arkansas.

Based on how much of its lethal drugs were used in April’s executions, Arkansas now has enough midazolam to conduct two executions, enough vecuronium bromide for 15 and enough potassium chloride for 11.

Midazolam sedates the inmates while the other drugs stop their lungs and hearts.