‘Impeach Trump’ banner can stay, Wellesley officials now say
"I think it's a really rational and wise decision."
A 12-foot-long “Impeach Trump” banner hanging from a Wellesley home is allowed to stay in place after initially receiving pushback from town officials.
Dan Chiasson, who recently unfurled the custom-made sign from the second floor of his Cliff Road house, had been told the sign violated local zoning bylaws. He had seven days to take it down or else be subjected to $300 fines each day it remained.
In a letter dated Jan. 28, officials said the sign was too large and too high up. Local bylaws limit signs to a size of 6 square feet and they cannot be posted “higher than 3 feet above grade,” officials wrote in the letter, which Chiasson shared on Twitter.
Came home to certified mail. @TownOfWellesley do you really want to try to enforce this? @BostonGlobe @wellesleytown pic.twitter.com/20KBLv2EbY
— Dan Chiasson (@dchiasso) January 30, 2019
Chiasson told Boston.com Thursday that he would not take it down, citing questions over the bylaw’s constitutionality. And then later Thursday, Stephanie Hawkinson, communications manager for the Town of Wellesley, said Town Hall had opted to rescind the violation, heeding the advice of town counsel.
Officials actually want to thank Chiasson for bringing the issue to their attention, she said in an interview.
“In Wellesley, we always want to … review our town bylaws, and this gives us a good opportunity to do that,” she said.
Chiasson, a Wellesley College professor and poetry critic for The New Yorker, said he initially put up the banner last June, taking it down briefly during the November midterm elections.
He decided to hang it up after the political yard signs he’d peppered on his front lawn in the past were often vandalized, he said.
The violation letter from the town this week came as a surprise, he said.
“If I had been told to take down a sign that says, you know, ‘Go Wellesley Raiders,’ or a sign advertising an open house at a private school, I wouldn’t have any trouble taking the sign down,” Chiasson said in an interview Thursday, prior to receiving word of the town’s retraction. “I’m refusing on the grounds it’s a stifling of my free-speech rights.”
Chiasson could not be reached for follow-up comment after officials rescinded their violation notice, but told The Boston Globe he was very happy to hear the news.
“I think it’s a really rational and wise decision on part of the town, and I thank them,” he said.
Municipal bylaws across the country have been under review and criticism the last few years after a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision hashed out what exactly the government can regulate when it comes to signs.
Hawkinson said the town last updated its sign bylaw in 2014.
“We realize that things have changed since that time,” she said.
