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REENWICH, Conn., March 12 - In this fashionable, well-to-do part of Connecticut, the home of a titan of industry could easily be mistaken for a castle. But what does that make the street outside his gated driveway?
Three environmental activists who ventured last weekend onto the well-appointed street where the chief executive of J. P. Morgan Chase lives may help settle the question. Within a half-hour of their arrival, they were charged with disturbing the peace for their roles in tacking posters critical of the bank's environmental record on telephone poles and trees.
The posters were designed as old-fashioned "Wanted" posters, featuring photographs of the chief executive, William B. Harrison Jr., referred to as "Billy the Kid" in the accompanying text. The posters criticized the bank for what was described as its "reckless investment in environmentally and socially destructive projects in dozens of countries," and urged anyone who spotted Mr. Harrison to "ask him to do the right thing."
Annette Lamoreaux, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, said her office was considering getting involved in the case. "I find this extremely troubling," she said. "These arrests were clearly based on the content of the posters that were put up, which on their face are protected speech."
Such activity, she said, "was protected under the First Amendment." She paused momentarily before adding, "even in Greenwich."
The activists, who say they have never been arrested before, were working on behalf of the Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco, which seeks to stop climate change as part of its mission. It has accused the major financial companies of financing projects that damage the environment, in industries like energy, mining and logging. Last year, the group elicited broad concessions from Citigroup and Bank of America, two of the largest domestic banks, but not from J. P. Morgan Chase, another top-tier bank.
A spokesman for J. P. Morgan Chase, Brian Marchiony, said the bank had said it would review its environmental policies by last fall, but had to delay a decision until next month because of its recent merger with Bank One. "We're on track for April," he said.
He also noted that Mr. Harrison was not home on March 5, the day of the arrests. Both Mr. Marchiony and Lt. Daniel Allen, a Greenwich police spokesman, said the executive had had no contact with the police.
The Greenwich police ordered the two activists who work as organizers for the Rainforest group, Althea Erickson, 24, of Manhattan, and Jess Eisen, 23, of Brooklyn, to appear in Stamford Superior Court for arraignment, now scheduled for March 28. They were charged under state law with disturbing the peace and violating the town's ordinance against posting unauthorized bills on public property and were released after posting $500 bonds.
Robert E. Nixon, 46, of Old Greenwich was acting as a volunteer for the environmental group when he drove the two women from the train station to the street in the Round Hill section of town where Mr. Harrison lives, on 5.3 acres in a turreted Tudor that he paid $6.05 million for in 1997. Mr. Nixon was charged with disturbing the peace. He said he was told to pay the $103 fine by mail or seek a court date to contest it.
The arrests were first reported on Wednesday in the local newspaper, Greenwich Time.
Lieutenant Allen said five neighbors had asked the police to investigate. He said the department had concluded that the posters "could be cause for alarm" because passers-by might think criminals were at large, and the department directed officers at the scene to remove all 14 they found.
According to Ms. Lamoreaux of the civil liberties union, many towns ban signs from public property without running afoul of the constitutional right to free speech. She said the arrests suggested selective enforcement because other signs, about everything from lost cats to political candidates, dangle from trees and poles in Greenwich without producing arrests.
Ilyse Hogue, the director of the global finance campaign at the Rainforest group, said she, too, found it odd that the activists had been arrested given that the posters resembled those used without legal repercussion in 2003, near the Greenwich home of Sanford I. Weill, asking him to "do the right thing" back when he ran Citigroup.
Lieutenant Allen said he did not know why the earlier set of posters had not resulted in arrests.
A drive down Mr. Harrison's street on Thursday showed no evidence of "Wanted" posters, but did reveal the presence of a sign on a telephone poll advertising a security company's services. Mr. Nixon said it was there on the day the activists were arrested.
Visitors might also be confused about how welcome they might be on Mr. Harrison's street, a secluded winding road where homes have amenities like carriage houses and long driveways with electronic gates. On one end, a sign simply states the street's name. On the other end, the words "Private Road" are appended.
Retracing his steps that day for a reporter, Mr. Nixon said his group never noticed the second sign. His companions, he said, knocked on doors and engaged some neighbors in a discussion of the bank's practices and hung posters along the street, as he ferried them from house to house.
"I was their tour guide, basically," said Mr. Nixon, a freelance writer.
All three activists said that the neighbors they met had been civil and that the police had overreacted.
Ms. Hogue said her group was also having trouble making sense of the arrests. "It's so ridiculous," she said.
Given the financial role that many banks play in overseas projects, she warned that more campaigns of this kind would come to other neighborhoods where chief executives live. That, she said, includes companies whose leaders support environmental causes on their own time.
"These are the most pressing issues of our time, climate change and biodiversity," Ms. Hogue said. "So we can no longer afford the luxury of these titans of Wall Street looking at these issues as a hobby on the side."
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN © NYT.
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