The Utah Animal Rights Coalition has been waiting since April for city permits to stage five protests near the Delta Center during the rodeo and figure skating competition at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games.
The group contends that Salt Lake is dragging its heels on their request for permits to demonstrate against the Olympic rodeo. The advocates applied for permission to stage sidewalk protests using a megaphone while chanting slogans, waving signs and passing out leaflets to show its disapproval of the rodeo.
City Attorney Roger Cutler said officials are taking a harder look at plans for Olympic protests after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He said, “there’s a lot of concern by police and the public-safety command about how we’re going to manage requests for demonstrations, and we’re still working on that”.
The group, asserting the city’s inaction amounts to a denial, filed an administrative appeal that Cutler called premature. “We haven’t denied anything. And besides, we may accommodate it in a different way”.
Cutler said the Salt Lake Organizing Committee was asking the city to block demonstrations for several blocks around the Delta Center.
The animal-rights coalition says rodeos are cruel to animals and objects that a rodeo will be part of the Cultural Olympiad during the February Winter Games.
