Two Harbors weighs banning protest parking at Lakeview Cemetery

Two Harbors is weighing whether protest parking at Lakeview Cemetery should stop, a fight that has grown from a local nuisance into a test of how the city applies rules on public land. The dispute centers on Breakwall Indivisible, which has parked there for about 14 months while staging one-hour rallies along Highway 61.

The issue returned to the council at a special meeting posted for 5 p.m. on Wednesday, June 3, after the matter had been tabled at the May 26 council meeting. City meetings are normally held on the second and fourth Mondays, but the special session gave officials a faster route to a decision on a problem that had already become a civic flashpoint.

At the center of the debate is a 1944 ordinance saying the cemetery cannot be used as a thoroughfare. City officials read that language to include parking, warning that continued use could lead to tickets. Breakwall attorney Cindy Kosiak said the ordinance was never intended to cover parking and asked that the group be allowed to keep using the cemetery, or at least be granted a permit. The council rejected the permit idea, saying there was no mechanism to override the ordinance that way.

The disagreement carried extra weight because of the cemetery’s veterans’ section. Some veterans viewed parking there as disrespectful, while others did not see it as a major issue. Breakwall members pushed back on any suggestion that they were dishonoring the grounds, saying they have family and friends buried there and routinely honor the graves before and after rallies.

Sharon Ropes Erickson told the council that her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents are buried in Lakeview Cemetery. She said the group places daffodils and salutes the graves in gratitude for military service. Gail Trygstad framed the dispute as a balancing act between dignity and constitutional rights, arguing that the two should not be treated as opposites.

Lakeview Cemetery is not a vacant lot or an empty buffer beside Highway 61. It is an active city cemetery with a grave-search feature and a decoration policy that requires flowers to be removed by September 15 each year. That makes the parking question more than a dispute over convenience; it is about how a managed public burial ground should be used, who gets access, and whether the city enforces its rules consistently.

Breakwall’s event listing says the group rallies every Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. at its usual location in front of Lakeview Cemetery, with Saturdays used during the cold months. Earlier reporting described Breakwall as a local chapter of the national Indivisible movement, founded around concerns about civil liberties and constitutional rights. The council’s refusal to create a permit workaround leaves the city with a sharper choice ahead: revise the ordinance, enforce it more aggressively, or watch the same conflict return to the agenda.