A sacred space for groups to gather in the shadow of the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, the plaza is a $268,983 homage to free speech near Fifth and Market Streets.

One problem: Is it necessary?

I ask because even after Mayor Nutter and Park Service officials praised the People's Plaza as a symbol of our most cherished right to disagree, it seems strange to have to designate someplace to do it.

Should the government really be in the business of requiring people to get permits to rant and rave at will?

One man's message

What, Michael Marcavage wonders, would Ben Franklin think of the People's Plaza?

Marcavage, 28, is an evangelical preacher who believes Satan has "invaded our communities" through a national tolerance for abortion, pornography, homosexuality and "other sin celebrations."

The Lansdowne man founded Repent America, whose Web site (www.repentamerica.com) warns of a "lake of fire where the unsaved will burn for all eternity."

I met Marcavage last week at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia, where he's on trial for violating a Park Service demonstration permit he didn't ask for and refused to accept because "we don't believe we need government permission to exercise our rights."

Media-savvy, Marcavage filmed his October altercation outside the Liberty Bell and posted it on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV0-OhihAUo).

For insisting upon spreading the word on a busy sidewalk - and refusing to move to the wide-open grassy area where People's Plaza now sits - Marcavage faces a $125 fine. For reasons I can't fathom, the U.S. Attorney's Office asked for a continuance so that a supervisor can prosecute the case.

Park Service spokeswoman Jane Cowley insisted that "there is no free-speech zone" around the birthplace of democracy. But with 300 requests a year to demonstrate and waves of tourists who show up when it's warm, she said, there are spots "where we ask people not to congregate."

The sidewalk Marcavage refused to budge from is one of them.

"Public sidewalks are the quintessential public forum," argued Marcavage's attorney, C. Scott Shields, who suspects the government wants to silence his client more for what he says than where he says it.

Win or lose, Marcavage doesn't intend to partake of the People's Plaza anytime soon. He's got football fanatics to convert at the Super Bowl in Arizona and "Spring Break Outreach" to conduct in Florida.

Speaking out about speech

Back at the unveiling, the Park Service's Darla Sidles made clear that protesters can still say whatever they want anywhere in the park as long as they get that permit.

"Content is protected."

Mayor Nutter heralded colonial-era rabble-rousers, "real people taking real chances, expressing themselves in ways that could have gotten themselves in serious trouble."

Luckily, he added, "we don't have to worry about that today."

David Miller, of the Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting, received the ceremonial first permit to use the People's Plaza. He nodded when I asked him if it wasn't a little weird to need it.

"We've had those conversations," acknowledged the pacifist.

For eight years, Miller told me, upwards of a dozen Quakers have spent Saturday afternoons praying on the sidewalk at the park.

On the sidewalk? Wasn't that where Marcavage and his mouth got in the "serious trouble" that isn't supposed to happen anymore?

Yet the Quakers have escaped arrest. "We're here," Miller said, "to create a small space of peace."

Maybe that particular detail speaks to Marcavage's prosecution. Quakers present a more pleasant image than a street preacher telling tourists that "innocent babies are being murdered" and one day "we're all going to die."

Marcavage's message isn't tame, but it's as much a part of the unvarnished story of America as anyone else's. And isn't that what visitors come to hear?