SEPTEMBER
4, 2004 --
Thank
you Republican National Convention for not granting credentials
to Lonely Pamphleteer Review to your 2004 gathering in Manhattan.
With credentials, LPR might have been lured to your proceedings
and missed all the photo ops that indicate the freedom
that the next Bush Administration will bring to the world, and
the government service it will bring to our country.
 |
The
front of Madison Square Garden.
|
The
first taste of the new freedom was received as LPR walked out
onto Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street, the evening of
August 31 and turned back to Madison Square Garden to take
some photographs.
The authoritative voice of a member of the NYPD was heard to
declare the necessity
to "keep moving." LPR thereupon began to walk backwards,
while trying to get a photo of the convention site.
 |
Blocks
on 32nd Street leading to the Garden.
|
Photos of
Seventh Avenue did not, however seem to be a good idea, from
the tone of the authoritative voice. Reaching Sixth Avenue,
LPR saw that 32nd Street was blocked by huge … blocks. But
perhaps these blocks are too big to symbolize the new freedom
in store for the world -- and us.
 |
Notice
the plastic cuffs on this NYPD officer.
|
A more manageable
symbol might be the plastic handcuffs carriied by the great number
of police persons in Manhattan during your
convention. (It was noted to me two days after you completed
your work that political conventions seem to be held not in
convention centers, but in
basketball arenas.)
The evening of August 31, LPR was in Union Square park and
saw a rather large police presence at 16th Street on the east
side
of the park.
 |
The
crowd on 16th Street.
|
 |
The
police in formation on 16th Street.
|
 |
Woman
reacting to the police influence and the crowd on 16th
Street
|
Apparently,
part of this NYPD deployment had contained people in the street,
people who were being arrested. It was difficult
to observe the situation, even those moments when it was possible
to be on the situational side of the street, where local residents
expressed some criticism of the occurence.
But soon, the NYPD effectively removed observers from the corner
of 16th and Union Square East to the park side of the thoroughfare.
LPR saw no
arrests of any of the observers, but did, later, hear the threat
of arrest stated -- under unclear circumstances.
 |
A
woman heckling the GOP at 34th Street and Herald Square.
|
LPR left this
venue after 10 p.m. and walked back to 34th Street -- and Herald
Square, getting there just in time to see some
Republicans heckled by people who
seemed not to like their looks. But the looming tense atmosphere
was disrupted when photographers were drawn from the hecklers
to a voluptuous vision of political loveliness.
 |
Blonde
moving in, for attention.
|
Pausing briefly
at the outdoor MSNBC Herald Square studio -- more on that
later, LPR continued up Broadway to the theater district,
and found
people carrying mementos from the convention, learning
that they were from Tennessee.
 |
Tenessee
delegates.
|
A few blocks
up Broadway, LPR saw other people carrying convention-related signs
as they disembarked from a bus
-- with bystanders greeting
them by thumbs-down gestures.
 |
A
thumbs down for the GOP.
|
Prior to reaching
this venue of anti hospitality, LPR had heard another authoritative
NYPD voice, explaining
that photos were not to be taken of a sign stating that
people and vehicles could be searched.
And so, the next day, as LPR drove up Sixth Avenue--which
was easier to traverse while the convention was in session
than
on regular business days --what a boon to have members
of the NYPD
directing traffic-- LPR took a photo of the sign.
 |
Search
notice posted on 31st and 6th.
|
It
was, of course, not possib le for LPR to get a photo of President
Bush, convention week, but LPR got just
about the
next best thing:
September 1 -- an exclusive photo of Brother John J.
Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, before a labor rally
against
Mr. Bush, on Eighth Avenue, just down from the convention
site.
 |
John
J. Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO.
|
Labor brethren
filled the Avenue from 30th to 24th streets, with an additional,
if modest, presence, between
23 and
24th streets.
(The evening of September 2, LPR was interested to
find flashing signs on Madison Square Garden, thanking "organized
labor." as
well as New York, NYPD and FDNY.)
 |
People
at labor anti-Bush rally.
|
 |
The
GOP's thanking Organized Labor on the Garden's Jumbotron.
|
Thousand of
people attended the September 1 labor rally and thousands more
attended a NOW rally in Central
Park's East
Meadow -- one
of the venues denied to the United For Peace and Justice
Bush protest August 29. The message at the NOW rally
was the same
as the message of UFPJ.
 |
"Taking
Back America" sign
|
|
|
| Indeed
at least two NOW speakers had spoken at the UFPJ event: Congressman
Owens--who seems to predict that a re-elected,
perhaps he would prefer "returned," President
Bush will turn the country into a "snakepit of fascism."
LPR
spoke briefly with former U.S. diplomat Ann Wright, who was
to speak at the NOW rally and had addressed the UFPJ August 29 event,
noting that she was
one of three State Department
officials to quit in protest over our Iraq policy.
 |
Former
Diplomat Ann Wright.
|
Ambassador Wright
indicated to LPR that she thought we should have focused our attention
on Afghanistan, where she had been sent while deputy chief of mission
in Mongolia. Crowds
were slow in arriving at East Meadow, but the grassy hillside
filled up, drawing some picnickers among the politically-concerned.
 |
NOW
Rally Picknickers.
|
 |
This
was the scene at Ground Zero while President Bush was
speaking at the GOP Convention, Sept. 2.
|
The evening
of September 2, as President Bush was giving the country his
vision of freedom and government action, LPR went first to
Ground Zero, whose perimeter, certainly at night, has a starkly
cold appearance. Then to Union Square which seemed caught in
a 1960s time warp, and back to Herald Square and the open air
MSNBC studio.
Other convention evenings, LPR was permitted in the space set aside for the
public -- but could see little save for the back of Chris Matthews's head.
This last convention evening, LPR was told that the area was closed to the
public for security reasons. Not even Georgia delegates were allowed in. Peering
in through a side fence, LPR got a photo of Joe Scarborough, Ron Reagan Jr.
and Ron Silver (these Rons seeming to have
left prior political orientation (while leaving the total numbers of Rons properly
constant).
 |
Joe
Scarborough, Ron Reagan Jr. and Ron Silver at MSNBC's
outside studio.
|
Continuing
up Seventh Avenue, LPR was heartened to see a cowboy hat proclaiming
love for New York.
 |
Proudly
wearing a Cowboy hat with "I Love NY."
|
A word, now,
about the Fuji Film blimp. LPR caught sight of the blimp on September
3, this time without the letters NYPD on it. Yet the sight of
the blimp
with those letters lingers. LPR appreciates the September 3 gesture, proclaiming
the blimp is no longer in the employ of the finemeister -- who now
seems to have qualified as jailmeister.
 |
Fuji
blimp behind the Empire
State Building and a church steeple.
|
 |
LPR
took this photo of the Fuji blimp September 3 -- (without
NYPD on the side).
|
Yet
whatever the F in FUJI might stand for, LPR will not think
of "F
as in Friendly" when it sees this blimp. (And certainly not F as in Freedom.)
Now about the finemeister changing into
jailmeister… The morning of August 31, civil liberties lawyer Norman
Siegel held a press conference across from Pier 57, used, during the convention,
as a detention center. Mr. Siegel's main concern, that morning, was the threat
posed by asbestos to detainees, although he also expressed concern about the
unusual length of time detainees were held -- some 24 hours to get desk appearance
tickets, instead of the usual 2 to 6 hours.
 |
A
photo of Pier 57, where the detainees were held.
|
 |
Civil
Liberties Attorney Norman Siegel.
|
After
the Siegel press conference, a person stepped up to the microphones
and said that he had been held in Pier 57 from the previous
Friday to Saturday,
and that detainees had to lie down on an oily floor. This detainee called
the pier "Guantanomo on the Hudson," a term picked up by UFPJ
in a subsequent e-mailing. A police source later denied to LPR that there
was oil on the pier floor.
A woman journalist who had been picked up in an arrest sweep, August 31, told
LPR thart she saw no oil, but the floor was filthy. She also said that people
were held in the pens with the plastic handcuffs still on, adding that the
police officer who cuffed her was apologetic and said he
would not hurt her with the cuffs.
While the Siegel press conference was underway, LPR noticed a car being towed
to the police pound… A long-standing expression of another form of detention
in New York City, arguably costlier to citizens than the convention detentions
will be.
 |
The
great 20th street pothole
|
 |
DEP
sign on truck …
|
After
the Siegel conference, LPR drove east on 20th Street, to find,
near Eighth Avenue, a large hole in the roadway. LPR stopped
to take pictures and soon after, a resident walked over and
told LPR that that hole had been there for four weeks.
Had
protesters gathered at this site, they might have advanced
freedom's cause against those who daily provide ongoing cause
for the concern of our Founding Fathers about the encroachment
of power by government.
This encrochment is not likely to abate under a second
Bush Admninistration that seeks to expand the role of government
-- to better our lives, of course.
(How
soon until a Bushie explains how eggs must be broken if we are to have omelets.)
LPR returned to 20th street twice after first spotting
the great pothole and, September 3, seeing someone
working at a manhole near the pothole, immediately
took a photo, as indication attention was finally being paid.
But the photo
seemed to have bothered the individual annoyed that LPR did not first provide
identification. LPR showed its press ID and gave a card. The individual never
identified himself, and took down the license plate of the LPRMobile.
LPR is already on NYPD surveillance tape, taken at
Union Square East and 16th Street. The license plate
will provide the city worker with other information, no doubt.
Perhaps even parking tickets.
If
President Bush were serious about renewing freedom here at
home, he would remind the country of our founding principles,
which are premised on countering the threat to liberty from
expanding government power.
The anti-Bushies say no to the Bush agenda. It is not clear that that agenda
includes any kind of commitment to the legacy of liberty our Founders intended
to leave for us.
It
is not likely that the powers in New York City realize the
irony that the number on the detention
pier is identical to the Federalist paper that warns tyranny is inevitable
when leaders lack interests with, and sympathy for, the people. |
|
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
