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Today's
Stories
July 23, 2004
Gary Leupp
The 9/11 Commission and the Looming
War on Iran
July
22, 2004
M.
Junaid Alam
Ten Ways to Build a Better Democrat
Brian
McKinlay
Rusted On Down Under: Howard, Bush and Sharon
Jason
Leopold
Cheney Lobbied for Easing of Sanctions on Terrorist Regimes While
CEO of Halliburton
Chris
Floyd
Mob Rule: Ripping the Lid Off of America's Pious Myths
Uri
Avnery
Chirac v. Sharon
July
21, 2004
Paula
J. Caplan
The Emotional Casualities of War: Psychologists
Can't Heal All the Damage
Joshua
Frank
Nader Sleeping with the Enemy? Let's be Fair
Ron
Jacobs
American Exceptionalism
Reza
Ghorashi
The Elections, Iran and al-Qaeda
Amy
Martin
Will Congress Rearm the Guatemalan Generals?
John
Ross
Bush May Lose, But His Wars Will Go On and On
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's Sizzling
New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
July
20, 2004
Stan
Cox
The Bush / Kerry War Ticket
Chris
Randolph
An Open Letter to Dr. Ehrenreich: It's Over, Barb!
Forrest
Hylton
The Ghosts of Gonismo: "Popular Patricipation"
and Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Mark
Scaramella
It's Official! Mendocino County is Crazier and Fatter Than the Rest
of California
Sam
Bahour
The World is Knocking on Israel's Door
George
Reiter
A Defense of David Cobb
John
Ross
Burying Iraq, Burying Bush
John
L. Hess
Girlie Stuff: Media Tolerance of Arnold & Co.
Website
of the Day
This Land is Your Land
July
19, 2004
Uri
Avnery
Marie and the Ghosts: the Hoax of Paris
Col.
Dan Smith
What Has Been Accomplished?
Mike
Whitney
Allawi: Our Puppet with a Pistol
Karyn
Strickler
Just Marriage, Not Gay Marriage
Robert
Fisk
The Crisis of Information in Baghdad
David
Swanson
Media Blackout of US Labor Opposition to Iraq
War
Jennifer
van Bergen
The Death of the Great Writ of Liberty
July
17 / 18, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations is
Must Reading
Ghada
Karmi
Vanishing the Palestinians
Lenni
Brenner
When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Notes for Ralph Nader
Ben
Tripp
Man on a Bridge: a Ghost Story
Brandy
Baker
What Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton Make of John Kerry?
M.
Shahid Alam
Israel Builds Another Wall
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Nuclear Hypocrisy: Israel, Iran and the IAEA
Patrick
Bond
The George Bush of Africa
Fred
Gardner
Politics of Marijuana: Cannabiniod Therapuetics
William
Blum
Bush and Thucydides
Ben
Terrall
Carter and the Indonesia Elections: "I Don't See Anything Wrong
with a General Running the Country"
Tom
Barry
John Lehman on the War Path
David
Vest
Dylan Without the Music
Phyllis
Pollack
Return to Sin City: Keith Richards Does Gram Parsons
Ron
Jacobs
Smearing Muhammad Ali: Bob Feller Strikes Out
Joshua
Frank
Kerry to Edwards: "Let's Lose!"
David
Nally
A Call for Sudan: Our Georgraphical Blindspot
Toni
Solo
Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Landau,
Hassan, Prashad & Lindorff
Three Reviews of Moore's F911
Poets's
Basement
Ford, Smith and Albert
July
16, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Adonal Foyle: Master of the Lefty Lay-Up
Shervan
Sardar
Dershowitz, the ICJ and Jim Crow Laws
Ron
Jacobs
The Lil' Engine That Couldn't: Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War Plank
Robert
Fisk
Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe: Coffin Bombs
in Baghdad
Greg
Moses
The Forts of Iraq
Mickey
Z.
Ad Infinitum?: Presidential Campaigns in the Age of TV
Dan
Bacher
A Landmark Win for Salmon and the Tribes
Dave
Lindorff
The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP, But a Movement
in Shambles
Paul
McGeough
Did Allawi Shoot Inmates in Cold Blood?
Website
of the Day
10 Reasons to Fire Bush (and 9 Reasons Kerry Won't Be Any Better)
| July
23, 2004
First Skirmish
in the Battle of NYC
Bush 1,
Protesters 0
By
DAVE LINDORFF
Bush
may be on the defensive in the presidential election contest, but
he won a big victory in New York Wednesday, when the main organization
protesting the Republican convention set to begin August 29 agreed
to Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s take-it-or-leave-it
“offer” of a permit that pens in the demonstration on
Manhattan’s West Side Highway.
“We
were forced into this,” says an angry and disappointed Bill
Dobbs, spokeperson for United for Peace and Justice, the main march
organizer. “The city had simply broken off negotiations for
a permit to use Central Park, and let’s face it, with only
a month to go before the convention, the clock was ticking.”
The
decision to shunt protesters over to the West Side Highway represents
the most large-scale example yet of the Bush/Cheney strategy of
penning in demonstrators and protesters during presidential events.
As
I reported in Salon magazaine in October 16, 2003 (“Keeping
dissent invisible”), the Bush strategy, which is designed
to keep protesters far away from both Bush and Cheney and from the
media who follow them like flies, was kicked off at the last Republican
national convention, in Philadelphia four years ago. That time,
the GOP planners, knowing they were dealing with a city government
desperate for a major convention, extorted local officials into
granting them a blanket permit for all available public sites in
the city. They didn’t need them (god knows most Republican
convention-goers are afraid to stand on a bib city street), but
the point was this left protesters with no place to rally—a
situation that produced endless confrontations with police, hundreds
of arrests, police riots and injuries on both sides.
Subsequently,
White House advance teams and the Secret Service have routinely
instructed local police at cities where the president or vice president
plan to visit to remove demonstrators—particularly those carrying
signs which might mar the TV imagery of a triumphant presidential
motorcade or rally—and pen them in, often in fenced-in enclosures,
well away from the event and the media. The result is news coverage
that has seemed to suggest a universally adored administration.
The
ACLU has filed suit in federal court over the practice, seeking
an injunction against it, but the suit has not yet been decided.
In any event Mayor Bloomberg has willingly done the president’s
bidding in this case, denying for no good reason the protest organization’s
request for a permit to use the Great Lawn in Central Park, long
the venue for major concerts and demonstrations and capable of accommodating
at least 250,000 people. His explanation for the denial: they’ll
damage the grass.
So
what’s wrong with the West Side Highway?
First
of all, how can you have a rally—a rally! —that is stretched
out 50 feet wide by several miles long? Participants certainly,
and probably the media and the national public as well, will have
no sense of the magnitude of the event if it is strung out like
that.
Second, the site is well removed from the Madison Square Garden
site of the convention itself, meaning that the Republican conventioneers
themselves will be completely insulated from the public protests.
(There will be a march past the Garden enrooted to the highway,
but it will be over before much is going on there.)
The highway location is bad for another reason, purely humanitarian.
There will be no shelter from rain or sun, and in the dog days of
summer in late August; the likelihood is for blasting heat. In Central
Park, the temperature is several degrees cooler, and the air fresher,
than in the rest of the city, and the trees provide a respite for
those who are overwhelmed by the heat. It is likely that many people,
especially older ones, will succumb needlessly to heatstroke standing
for hours on the highway. Many others will probably decide simply
not to come because of the location—no doubt Bloomberg’s
intention.
Finally,
and most importantly, the highway location makes containment by
police much simpler. They need only block each of the cross-town
streets to prevent anyone from escaping the containment area. Buildings,
and the Hudson River, will do the rest of the job for them.
It
is unfortunate that United for Peace and Justice agreed to this
repressive plan—a plan that should shame the city of New York—instead
of fighting on in the courts against what could well have been ruled
a violation of civil liberties. On the other hand, the organizers
needed to have a solid plan for a demonstration lest uncertainty
cause out-of-town protesters to cancel plans to attend.
"We
need to move on, so we decided to take the high road here,"
said Leslie Cagan, leader of UPJ, at a Wednesday news conference
announcing the organization’s surrender after a year of battle
with the city. "The city forced us into a location we did not
want. It's not our first choice."
Dobbs
adds that in its last appeal of a Bloomberg denial of a march permit,
back in February, 2003, protest organizers lost both in federal
district court and in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. “Going
to court to fight this would not have been a slam dunk,” he
says.
Besides,
the UPJ did win one big victory—the right to have the march
that precedes the rally go directly past the Madison Square Garden
convention site. The march permit calls for assembling in the city’s
Chelsea district (on Seventh Ave. between about 14th and 23rd Streets),
going up Seventh Avenue in front of the Garden at 34th Street, then
west to the West Side Highway, and back down to the rally site.
“I hope everyone will plan on coming to deliver this protest’s
message, which is: ‘The World Says No the the bush Agenda
of War, Greed, Lies and Hate!’” says Dobbs.
UPJ still says it expects hundreds of thousands of protesters on
Aug. 29 and says it is still working with police and city officials
on details regarding the highway site.
It’s
all just one more example of the extent to which this administration
and its supporters have repressed dissent and constricted the freedom
of movement of those who would protest its abuses.
Meanwhile,
with many activists calling the UPJ agreement with the city a liberal
cave-in, an
anonymous group has called for people to ignore the city and
assemble in Central Park’s Great Lawn anyway.
The
combination of Mayor Bloomberg’s unconstitutional pandering
to White House desires, and the UPJ’s decision to accept a
less than ideal site, means the potential is there for a new “People’s
Park” episode or a replay of the 1968 Democratic Convention
in Chicago. If enough demonstrators heed the call to enter the park,
city police, busy penning in demonstrators on the West Side, will
be hard-pressed to prevent them.
Warns
Dobbs, “Mayor Bloomberg, because of his hostility to free
expression, is helping to invite chaos.”
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new
book of CounterPunch columns titled "This
Can't be Happening!" to be published this fall by Common
Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by
Lindorff can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com
Weekend Edition July 17 / 18, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations is
Must Reading
Ghada
Karmi
Vanishing the Palestinians
Lenni
Brenner
When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Notes for Ralph Nader
Ben
Tripp
Man on a Bridge: a Ghost Story
Brandy
Baker
What Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton Make of John Kerry?
M.
Shahid Alam
Israel Builds Another Wall
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Nuclear Hypocrisy: Israel, Iran and the IAEA
Patrick
Bond
The George Bush of Africa
Fred
Gardner
Politics of Marijuana: Cannabiniod Therapuetics
William
Blum
Bush and Thucydides
Ben
Terrall
Carter and the Indonesia Elections: "I Don't See Anything Wrong
with a General Running the Country"
Tom
Barry
John Lehman on the War Path
David
Vest
Dylan Without the Music
Phyllis
Pollack
Return to Sin City: Keith Richards Does Gram Parsons
Ron
Jacobs
Smearing Muhammad Ali: Bob Feller Strikes Out
Joshua
Frank
Kerry to Edwards: "Let's Lose!"
David
Nally
A Call for Sudan: Our Georgraphical Blindspot
Toni
Solo
Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Landau,
Hassan, Prashad & Lindorff
Three Reviews of Moore's F911
Poets's
Basement
Ford, Smith and Albert
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