- Six weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Centre, President George Bush flew to New York to throw out the ceremonial
first pitch in the World Series baseball game between the New York Yankees
and the Arizona Diamondbacks.
-
- The president was finding it difficult to throw the ball
in his bulletproof vest. "Are you going to throw from the rubber or
the base of the mound?" asked Yankee star Derek Jeter. The rubber,
the highest point on the mound, is the point from which a pitcher would
usually throw. Bush had been planning to throw from the base, which is
about six to 10 feet closer to the home plate. "If you throw from
the base of the mound they are going to boo you. You really need to take
the rubber," said Jeter.
-
- Bush, then at the height of his popularity and leading
a nation at war with Afghanistan and in fear of an anthrax attack, asked
Jeter if the fans would really be so mean. "Yeah," said Jeter.
"It's New York."
-
- Three years later, Bush is coming back to New York to
a sceptical, if not downright hostile public as the Republicans prepare
to kick off their convention on Monday. In an ad broadcast in June to prepare
New Yorkers, former Democratic mayor Ed Koch pleaded: "While they're
here, make nice. Volunteer to show 'em the ropes. They won't know uptown
from downtown. They've never ordered pizza by the slice."
-
- But with a week to go, the best they can hope for is
that this city, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by five
to one, doesn't "make too nasty". It may be in vain. So numerous
are the expected protesters at the presence of the "Grand Old Party"
in the city that its Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has spoken of
them as a marketing opportunity. Last week he offered discounts to Broadway
shows, museums, stores and restaurants to those wearing buttons bearing
a picture of the Statue of Liberty and the words "peaceful political
activists".
-
- "It's no fun to protest on an empty stomach, so
you might want to try a restaurant," said Bloomberg. "Or you
might want to go shopping, maybe for another pair of sneakers for the march."
-
- The protesters, meanwhile, are making their own plans.
At www.rncnotwelcome.org, a website dedicated to protesting against the
convention, a group called the Biotic baking brigade, spells out the basics
of how to pie your enemy. Step one: "Choose a worthy target. Any evil
pompous evil-doer will do for a glouping." After that, it breaks down
the strategy in to bite-size chunks, including, "Plan your pan"
and "The meringue is the message".
-
- A group of activists plan to ride down Lexington Avenue
on bicycles shouting, "The Republicans are coming! The Republicans
are coming!", mimicking the 18th-century Massachusetts craftsman Paul
Revere who rode a horse through that state warning locals that the British
were coming during the American War of Independence. A group of bell ringers,
meanwhile, are planning to surround the site of Ground Zero ringing 2,749
bells to commemorate the victims of September 11 and oppose the war.
-
- "Visitors to the city at the end of August may see
illegal murals with political messages and the city itself may become a
giant art installation," warns Liza Featherstone in the leftwing Nation
magazine. "Don't be surprised if you're crossing the street and a
traffic light flashes 'Beat Bush' instead of 'Don't walk'. "
-
- But not all the demonstrations will be unorthodox attention-grabbers.
Among the more traditional acts of protest will be a parade of thousands
of abortion-rights advocates marching across Brooklyn Bridge; the Hip-Hop
summit's poor people's march to Madison Square Garden, where the convention
is being held; the 5,000-strong permitless march of the poor being organised
by a welfare mother from Philadelphia; and the huge demonstration planned
for Sunday, which the demonstrators insist will be in Central Park and
the New York Police are adamant will be on the West side highway, but which
could reach a million-strong.
-
- Reverend Earl Kooperkamp of St Mary's Episcopal Church
in Harlem will be hosting between 30 and 50 protesters on the wooden pews
of his church, and has persuaded more than 30 other religious institutions
to do the same, offering housing to almost 500 people. "As long as
they're standing firm against war, working for peace, that's what the church
is supposed to be about," he told the New York Times. "We pray
every day to a guy called the Prince of Peace."
-
- Peace may not be on everyone's mind, however. At least
20,000 security personnel, representing everyone from the Secret Service
to civilian units of the Army National Guard, have been mustered. Given
that the convention is expected to attract only 48,000 visitors, including
delegates, lobbyists and journalists, this is the equivalent to one law-enforcement
official for every 2.4 civilians.
-
- Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been
questioning dozens of protesters who plan to come to New York, asking them
all three basic questions: were they planning to be violent, did they know
anyone else who was planning violent acts and did they understand that
it is a crime, to withhold any information if they might know. The questioning
immediately raised concerns about civil liberties, particularly after three
young men, who were planning to come to New York from Missouri, were subpoenaed
earlier this month and informed that they are part of a domestic terrorism
investigation, without being informed on what grounds.
-
- "It is part of a national effort to chill dissent
in this country," says Bill Dobbs, the spokesman for United for Peace
and Justice, which is staging week-long demonstrations in New York during
the convention. "And it is always a worry that this kind of intimidation
will scare people off."
-
- "The FBI isn't in the business of chilling anyone's
first amendment rights," says Joe Parris, an FBI spokesman, referring
to the right to free speech and free assembly enshrined in the United States
constitution. "But criminal behaviour isn't covered by the first amendment."
-
- The fact that the focus has shifted from what will be
said inside the convention to what might happen outside is a symbol of
just how much has changed in the national political mood over the past
18 months. Back in January 2003, when the party declared its choice of
New York (over New Orleans and Tampa), it seemed like a shrewd if cynical
move.
-
- The logic behind both the venue and the timing (the latest
of any convention) was to bolster George Bush's status as a war leader,
standing firm against terrorist attacks. "What we focused on was that
New York was the best background for the convention, growing out of the
events of September 11," says Roland Betts, a member of the committee
of Republicans assembled by Bloomberg to lobby the White House to come
to New York. As recently as July last year, former mayor Rudolph Giuliani
was claiming that Bush could even be the first Republican to take the state
since Ronald Reagan in 1984. "New Yorkers like strong leaders,"
he explained at the time.
-
- But that was then. In January 2003, when the announcement
was made, the nation was facing down the United Nations and preparing for
war with Iraq. President Bush had 59% approval ratings, 68% of Americans
supported military force against Saddam Hussein and the Democrats were
amassing a crowded field of contenders with no obvious frontrunner. Today,
Bush's approval ratings stand at 49%, 47% of Americans think going to war
was a mistake and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, leads in 13 of
the 17 key swing states, if only by a narrow margin in most of them. With
the latest poll giving Bush 35% in New York against Kerry's 53% he has
about as much chance of taking New York as Saddam Hussein does of taking
back Baghdad.
-
- Opposition to the war was not insignificant at the time,
but it had been marginalised. But the torture scandal in Abu Ghraib, President
Bush's premature declaration of victory in Iraq, a stiffer than expected
Iraqi resistance, a lack of international support and US military casualties
that could reach 1,000 during the convention, have put the war into mainstream
political debate. Meanwhile, the findings of the 9/11 commission into the
terrorist attacks, the publication of which has become a bestseller, have
exposed institutional shortcomings that put a question mark even over what
he hoped would be seen as his finest hour.
-
- In May last year, the leaseholder of the World Trade
Centre, Larry Silverstein, told the Daily News that New York state's Republican
governor, George Pataki, wanted to lay the cornerstone to the new building
during this year's convention. With the political winds blowing against
them, he did it on July 4 instead. "If you were to do something overtly
political around Ground Zero you'd get hammered for it, and rightly so,"
says Michael McKeon, a Republican strategist and a former senior aide to
Pataki.
-
- Sitting in a field last week just outside Orange, Connecticut,
about 20 mostly young people were discussing non-violence. They were about
two thirds of the way through a 258-mile march from Boston, scene of the
Democratic party convention, toNew York, where they plan to protest. Six
miles and several hours earlier they had set off from New Haven, Connecticut,
crossing paths with the "Stonewalk" - a procession of family
members of 9/11 victims, pulling a 1,400 pound granite memorial honouring
the "Un known civilians killed in war", also heading for the
Republican convention.
-
- Around two thirds of the 50 or so on the march would
describe themselves as anarchists, although there are Buddhists, pacifists
and others for whom knowing that they could not bear another four years
of Bush is enough. "I don't have a problem with people telling the
police to go fuck themselves," says one, prompting a debate about
the issue of verbal as opposed to physical violence. Also under discussion
is the issue of whether to "go limp" or "unarrest people"
if the police try to take them away.
-
- None of these people have walked all this way to "make
nice". But this particular band of vegan, non-hierarchical political
travellers are not out to carve great chunks out of the Big Apple either.
Like the authorities, however, they feel the need to be prepared if things
do spiral out of control. With no venue so far agreed for the main demonstration
on Sunday, and tempers rising over the FBI's tough stance, there is plenty
of scope for tensions to flare into something more serious.
-
- The last time the issue of violence dominated a national
political convention was Chicago in 1968. Back then there was a war in
a far-off land, a divisive Republican candidate in Richard Nixon and a
mayor who pledged not to compromise. The police responded to verbal abuse
from protesters and occasional missiles with tear gas and occasional beatings.
Connecticut senator Abraham Ribicoff took to the podium to decry "Gestapo
tactics in the streets of Chicago". It was a public relations disaster
for the Democrats, and Nixon went on a few months later to defeat Hubert
Humphrey.
-
- With Kerry taking a moderate stance on the war, these
demonstrations have little, if anything, to do with the Democratic party.
None the less, many believe that whoever is responsible, a rash of violence
so close to the election will once again benefit the Republicans. "If
I were a voice in top Republican circles, I might be offering this advice:
'What we need for New York is a large-scale riot,' " wrote Norman
Mailer in New York magazine recently, in a public written exchange with
his son. "I don't have a great deal of hope that most of the people
involved are really thinking of this election so much as expressing the
need to vent, to gain some self-therapy."
-
- "You do get a sense that the spiritual revolution
may be awakening," replied his son, John Mailer, who believes that
the protests could provide a focus for a huge anti-corporate movement.
"All right," replied Norman. "But if we lose the election,
it's going to be a very expensive spiritual education."
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1290110,00.html
|