EDITORIAL
Chalk drawing protests needn't warrant arrests

When bar and restaurant owners grew weary of removing graffiti from toilet stalls, they introduced chalkboards so customers could exercise an erasable form of free speech.

But chalk talk doesn't seem to fly with the Honolulu Police Department. At least it didn't at a demonstration at Fort Street Mall last week commemorating the 58th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima.

Police arrested two demonstrators — a 17-year-old girl and 27-year-old man — for drawing body chalk outlines and slogans on the sidewalk to protest weapons of mass destruction. They were booked on charges of criminal property damage and held for a couple of hours.

The American Civil Liberties Union says the arrests are a violation of free-speech rights, and we don't disagree.

The courts have not determined whether drawing on sidewalks is protected speech, but we can't see the crime in creating a removable artwork during a protest. Similar expressions were popular in New York following the Sept. 11 attack. At least 140,000 people were killed in the Hiroshima blast. Sometimes, it takes a visual reminder to express the poignancy of that.