New Yorkers, and ex-New Yorkers, will appreciate this column by long-time NYC journalist Jimmy Breslin on Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to make sure the Republicans don't know how New York City really feels about them when they arrive in August for the Republican Convention. (It comes complete with embarrassing NYC chauvinism!) An excerpt:
"[T]he Parks Department, as cheap fronts for Mayor Bloomberg, won't give any permits to the group running a demonstration against the Republican war during their convention at Madison Square Garden in August.
"They say that a large crowd would mash all the grass and maim the park.
"By a large number, 10-1, anything you want, and more, people of New York, the only city in the world worth living in and working in, don't want our young people getting killed in Iraq.
"As this is being typed, I wait for the press releases from the Defense Department telling the names, ages and hometowns of the seven Marines who were killed on Tuesday.
"One year ago, the group known as United for Peace and Justice asked for a permit to protest these deaths by marching in front of Madison Square Garden on the Sunday before the Republican convention in August. They then wanted a permit to hold a rally after the march in Central Park.
"In 1982, the same people in this organization ran an anti-nuclear-arms rally in the park and there were over a million and nobody even had a toe stepped on.
"This time, the Police Department took 10 months with the application. They then told the march organizers to go to the Parks Department. That bureaucracy announced that the rally would be too big and it would destroy any of the sweeping grass areas they chose.
"'They said that the grass would be ruined forever by all the feet,' says Bill Dobbs, who is a full-time and unpaid worker for the group....
"Yesterday, the groundskeeper for the Shinnecock Golf Club, where the U.S. Open was played two weeks ago, said, 'We had 50,000 a day for seven days on the grounds and the grass is back already. It's nonsense. You don't even know people were here....'
"The parks people, the police, the mayor, look like cheap liars as for some reason they try to prevent a rally that would send great noises into the sky against the Republicans. This rally is for free speech."
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