RNC Greeted by Vast Protest
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| Mon, 08-30-2004 - 3:48pm |
Favorite Sign Spotted: Professors Against Error
Biggest Cheer: For the NYFD when the crowd parted to let a firetruck through.
Biggest Jeer: Fox News has an enormous billboard right next to the garden which was met with boos and chants of "Fox News Sucks."
Most obnoxious protesters: That's got to be a tie between a group of socialists who urging people NOT to vote to protest the two party system (they might as well just vote for Bush then) or the small but exceedingly angry group of anti-abortion protesters who were parked in the prime-time spot just across from the Garden where the march turned the corner going east. I have no idea why they got to have an impromptu protest on the sidewalk, when United for Peace & Justice spent thousands on legal fees ironing out permits. They enjoyed picking particular people out of the crowd to yell at. Mostly people just ignored them, and the cops who separated them from the march looked pretty tired of it.
Upstaging Before the Show in True New York Fashion
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: August 30, 2004
n a few dozen blocks of the same slender island, two worlds collided yesterday: the Republican convention's calculated claims to patriotism and the presidency met elaborately planned and heavily Democratic street protests that turned those same arguments back at President Bush - in ways that might help, or hurt, both sides.
The demonstrations were New York City's biggest in decades, and the most emphatic at any national political convention since Democrats and demonstrators turned against each other in fury over Vietnam in Chicago in 1968. But the first day was overwhelmingly peaceful, and the demonstrators doused a good bit of Mr. Bush's intended message with television images of dissent.
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"New York certainly is an exciting city," Brad Freeman, a delegate from Los Angeles and one of Mr. Bush's old friends and longtime fund-raisers, said in one of the milder understatements since Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for the Dutch. "We'll have to wait until Friday to see what kind of a city it is for a Republican convention."
This was not the reception the Republicans had planned. They chose New York to evoke the moment of national unity that rallied Americans to Mr. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, only to find protesters claiming Mr. Bush had forfeited that goodwill by attacking Iraq. The marchers carried placards calling Mr. Bush "the next Milosevic" and demanding, "What would Jesus bomb?"
The Republicans stuck to their script in the face of the flak, hoping that if they can make it here - for at least four days - they can make it anywhere. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived at Ellis Island, opposite the gaping hole in the Manhattan skyline, and praised Mr. Bush as "a man calm in a crisis, comfortable with responsibility and determined to do everything necessary to protect our people."
And some of the delegates suggested that the protests would backfire to Mr. Bush's benefit, by painting Senator John Kerry - whose sister, Peggy, joined some of the weekend's events - as captive to demonstrators outside the mainstream.
"I left God's country," said Leon Mosley of Waterloo, Iowa, co-chairman of his state party. "They could use a bunch of people from Iowa to come here to show New Yorkers what life is all about, what being patriotic is all about, and what country is all about. I'm as confident about Bush being re-elected as I am that eggs are going to be in New York tomorrow morning.''
But some veteran conventiongoers suggested that the Republicans would be unwise to count their chickens just yet. In their own outspoken way, the protesters were making precisely the same point as Mr. Mosley, with children in strollers, grandparents on canes, all accepting the withering Sunday heat - and the overwhelming security presence intended to keep the march past Madison Square Garden orderly.
"I've been going to Republican conventions since 1972, and I've never seen a convention with as many protesters in the streets," said David Gergen, who has worked for several Republican presidents, and Bill Clinton. "The irony is that was a convention held here because of echoes of 9/11, but it opens with echoes of Chicago and the Vietnam war.
"The protests are anti-Bush, with heavy antiwar overtones, but this is Chicago without the fisticuffs, without the fight, without the bloodshed - so far," Mr. Gergen added. "To interpret this politically is hard, but my gut is that large, peaceful protests are not what the Republicans want. The protesters are stealing the story for the first day and drowning out the Republican message. If there's violence, that could all change."
To be sure, a seething anger pulsed throughout the protesting crowds. T-shirts and signs branded Mr. Bush a warmonger, a liar or a criminal, and there were fly-swatters with an image of his face. Two protesters, Jim Higgins and Kathy Roberts, dressed in suits made of duct tape to spoof Mr. Bush's handling of national security.
"We're occupying Iraq, but we're using duct tape here at home," Mr. Higgins said.
Moira Weidenborner, an English teacher and native New Yorker, sat on the corner of 14th Street and Seventh Avenue before the march began, straw hat in hand, in a shirt that said: "Justice, No War." She said the people she had met on the streets were "a very broad spectrum."
"There's all this attention on the radicals, which makes me upset," Ms. Weidenborner said. "Look around you today: It is middle class, it is working class, it is just people who want to speak their mind."
But Jason Glodt, executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party, said he thought the protesters did "reflect the base of the Democratic Party," and added: "I hope that all Americans are taking a close look at those protesters and what they represent. I don't think they represent American values.
"It's not their freedom of speech that we disagree with," Mr. Glodt said, "it's the content of what they're saying. It really only motivates us even more to go home and work harder at the grass-roots level and make sure people are going out and voting."
A certain clash of cultures is inevitable when so much of red-state America crams into so few square miles of the blue-state Big Apple. The White House was so concerned that the Republicans be gracious guests that it issued a stern warning to administration officials attending the convention not to misbehave at cocktail parties and turn down gifts worth more than $20, The Chicago Tribune reported.
For its part, the city's host committee plastered the Garden with posters reminding delegates that New York has 18,000 restaurants, 662 miles of subway track, 150 museums and 1,700 parks - in short, that it's still a helluva town. And the contrasts were by no means all hostile.
On the empty floor of the Garden Sunday afternoon, Senator George Allen of Virginia, a stalwart of his party's conservative wing, gamely practiced his convention speech, competing genially with a troupe of convention performers who burst into songs from Broadway shows, including "Tonight" from "West Side Story," a collaboration by four gay men, New Yorkers - and Americans - all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/politics/campaign/30assess.html?hp

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Side note...odd I found as well that a pro-life group with no permit was allowed such a high visiability spot.
I did not like the arsonist, or the people arrested assaulting the police trying to apprehend the arrsonist, however.
They probably just joined in the march, and then displayed their true intentions after they got the spot they desired.
With regards to your assertion that the Republicans are not wanted in NY, the last time I checked this is a free country, and only in NYC do Registered Democrats so severely outnumber Registered Republicans. Upstate it is a different story, so you cant say that all of NY doesnt want them here.
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Have you watched any of MSNBC's convention coverage? They've parked Mathews and his panel outdoors in the middle of Herald Square, just north of the convention. There are so many Kerry supporters surrounding them chanting "Kerr- ry...Kerr...ry" that it's hard to hear the pundits. I might walk by there on my way home just to get a look.
B) Parts of New York the state do have larger Republican bases, and if Bush for instance has wanted to go to Albany where he has a much broader base, would not have a problem with that if they wished to welcome him and his convention with Open Arms. However, the convention is not in Albany, is not where his base is located...he deliberately choose NYC against the wishes of its citizens, and that is wrong.
BTW, it is not an issue of National Security, but security in general that Mayor Bloomberg cited for not granting certain permits.
I have a question for you. If you are the authority on what actually happened to the protestors, and how it is impossible for them to get within blocks of MSG, then how do you explain the protestor who was arrested IN VP Cheney's box last night????????
Not only did he get within blocks of Madison Square Garden, he got inside, and got into the Vice Presidents private box. (talk about a lapse in security)
Thanks for clearing this up. I only heard about it, but didnt see it.
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