CITY BRACES FRO GRAND OLD PARTY
When terrorism fears, delegates, protesters, toursits and commuters converge in August, the results will be steamy - to say the least
BY GLENN THRUSH AND ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
STAFF WRITERS - NEWSDAY
June 13, 2004
Hang on.
For New York City, the nation's metropolis of multiple choices, 11 weeks remain before the rhythms of daily life - as if not remarkable enough here - are jazzed and jolted.
Spectaculars of sport, politics and couture are overlapping from late August to mid-September - the thwocks! of tennis balls at the U.S. Open in Queens; the speechifying, protesting and policing to accompany the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden; the pouty posturing on the Fashion Week runways in Bryant Park.
This summer, New Yorkers will experience security-to-the-max, transit disruptions, street closures and detours, protests in the streets, and those small, involuntary shudders of fear, unalterably framed by life in a post-terror city. And the GOP convention is, quite literally, the elephant in the room. After all, the tournament at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and Fashion Week are annual rites to which the city is accustomed to making adjustments.
Comparatively, the convention is a concentrated dose of people in a concentrated period of time: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Republican Party luminaries will welcome nearly 50,000 people, including delegates, party members and media, to events held over four days in Madison Square Garden.
They will transact their business atop the beehive of Penn Station, where on an average weekday 500,000 to 600,000 people get on and off trains from seven subway lines and Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit. Tens of thousands more subway riders pass through daily.
Brewing up a mess
The Aug. 30-Sept. 2 convention is the first time the Republican Party has chosen New York for its quadrennial conclave since it became a national party in 1856. Here, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 5 to 1 and Al Gore outpolled George W. Bush by more than 4 to 1 in the 2000 election, making for a surreal party-to-city pairing.
Juxtapose that lopsidedness with the GOP's status as the party in power, holding the White House and both houses of Congress, as well as the party of New York's Gov. George Pataki and Bloomberg (with the caveat that Bloomberg came late to the party, when he switched from Democrat to Republican to run for City Hall in 2001).
Throw in a city of 8-million-plus braced against the threat of future terror attacks. Add to the mix what by August will have been a 17-month military presence in Iraq, an action that before it even began brought the largest anti-war protest in the city since the early 1980s, and the brew is a volatile, steamy mess indeed.
John Timoney, the former NYPD first deputy commissioner who headed the Philadelphia police department during the 2000 Republican National Convention and now is commissioner of Miami's city police force, said there's a "chess game" under way between police and protesters planning street actions. Police now troll the Internet to monitor activists' organizing efforts - applying techniques law enforcers are using against terrorism.
"What's really complicating the whole security scheme is that, on top of all the protesters and terrorism stuff, is this president," Timoney said, referring to Bush. "There just seems to be this visceral dislike of him, more so than anyone we've seen in the past. The expectation is that you're going to get a lot of motivated people showing up."
Three months before the convention's start, and unlike officials in Boston, where the Democratic National Convention will be held July 26-29, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has made public few specifics of heightened security. The boundaries of the area around the Garden that may be "frozen" to vehicular and pedestrian traffic, or otherwise restricted, remain unclear, and the department has not issued permits for demonstrations.
The number of protesters landing in the city at convention time can only be guessed at. United for Peace and Justice, the umbrella group planning a huge march and rally for Aug. 29, the day before the convention's official opening, has estimated their crowd that day alone at 250,000.
"I think the word is clearly out in many activist circles," Bill Dobbs, spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, said without irony. "What I tell my friends is, these protests are not to be missed."
Maximum security
The Republican National Convention is New York's era-of-terror coming-out party, and an overwhelming law enforcement presence will be on hand to stand guard.
"When the Democrats were here in 1992, my biggest worry was someone getting mugged on 34th Street," said one high-ranking NYPD official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Now, I don't want that to happen. But there are such bigger concerns. I've got to be worried about terrorism. It's a whole different world now."
Outside and inside the Garden, officers from multiple law enforcement agencies will be stationed, some very apparent by their uniforms, others working undercover: the NYPD, FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, Metropolitan Transportation Authority and others. Elected officials within state delegations are planning to bring their own contingents.
Security personnel - some from private firms - also will be stationed at hotels where GOP delegates are staying and outside of locations where parties are held for delegates and other convention-goers.
The Police Department is going beyond "Operation Atlas," the ramped-up security strategy devised after the Sept. 11 attack. The August-September plan doesn't yet have a name, nor have many details leaked from One Police Plaza.
Police sources say up to 10,000 cops are likely to be assigned to convention duty, with the entire Patrol Bureau working 12-hour shifts in the days leading up to the convention and during it.
Most will be in uniform - on the streets on foot, on rooftops with high-powered rifles, on horses and scooters and in helicopters. Hundreds of other officers will be in plainclothes, and many more will be posted inside Madison Square Garden, working closely with the Secret Service and FBI, or guiding explosive-sniffing dogs through each train coming into Penn Station.
Two sources familiar with the city's plan said it appears likely that the Police Department will establish a security perimeter from West 29th Street north to West 34th or West 35th streets, between Seventh and Eighth avenues. Pedestrians would be allowed to shop and motor vehicles would be able to use the streets, though West 31st and West 33rd streets, which border the Garden on the south and north, could be restricted and perhaps closed at times, and access will be slowed by security posts.
Concern about safety among the delegates varies with the individual.
"I'm convinced it could very well be a target," said Alabama state Sen. Larry Dixon, who hasn't missed a convention in two decades.
He said he isn't inclined to venture too far from the Garden. "We'll stick with Manhattan, the shows, the restaurants, the museums," Dixon said. "I can't see us straying too far to other parts of the city. I'm not going to stray out and isolate myself like that."
Luke Byars, executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, said a survey of his members didn't turn up any fears about being in New York.
"What we've heard from the convention staff has been very reassuring," Byars said. "It's mind-boggling the amount of work that's going into this. I was in Philly four years ago, before all of this stuff happened, and to me it was like a lockdown. I can only imagine what it's going to be like in New York."
On his small survey, Ground Zero placed second only to the Statue of Liberty as the New York spot the South Carolina convention-goers most want to visit.
"I was not surprised at all," Byars said of the outcome. "There's a real feeling out there that this is a real landmark."
While some families of Sept. 11 victims have raised their voices against Ground Zero being used by either party as a political set piece, the act of spontaneous, nonpartisan pilgrimages there is viewed positively.
"I encourage everyone, absolutely, to go to Ground Zero," said Colleen Kelly, co-founder of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, whose brother, Bill Kelly Jr., 30, died in the north tower's collapse. "It helps you remember, and it's a way of remembering those who lost their lives. I would hope everyone attending comes to the site."
New York the magnet
In line with past political conventions of the television age, little of the goings-on inside the Garden will be left to the imagination.
For much of the past year, the staff planning the GOP blowout - expected to cost nearly $100 million, surpassing any previous convention - has brainstormed, breathed and dreamed the four-day extravaganza down to the most microscopic detail. The city's Host Committee, in its liaison role, has been similarly devoted.
On July 19, the Committee on Arrangements for the convention gets unlimited access to the Garden, with barely six weeks to construct a raised floor, main stage and other platforms, and outfit the arena with state-of-the-art production, lighting and sound gear for optimum audience impact.
In convention planning and execution, this exactitude and specificity is assumed. What is a significant emerging element of the 2004 conventions - both for the Democrats in Boston and the Republicans in New York - is the far-in-advance planning also being done by those who will march and make noise.
Scores of activist groups - some of them of long standing and well-known, some ad hoc "affinity groups" formed specifically for this purpose - are making the two conventions their summer destinations.
New York is the magnet drawing more of them.
"I think everyone is treating this as being an extraordinary, if not unique, event," said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "It's a combination of the Republicans coming to Manhattan during a time of war in the aftermath of Sept. 11th. That's creating an extraordinary situation in which there's every reason to believe there's going to be huge demonstrations. And the Police Department is very concerned about security."
In January, Kelly pledged that demonstrators will be allowed "within sight and sound" of Madison Square Garden, an invocation of the long-established principle of protesters' First Amendment rights in terms of proximity to a targeted location. In late April, Kelly recommended that groups wishing to demonstrate submit applications to the NYPD for march or sound permits by Tuesday.
Protest organizers, many with their permit applications already in the Police Department hopper for weeks if not months, are getting restive for response.
"There is an obligation to accommodate protest, the constitutional right of those who wish to dissent, as there is an obligation to accommodate the Republican National Convention," said Dobbs, of United for Peace and Justice. "We want to see more than words from the Police Department. It's time for permits. It's time for them to lay out for the public what life is going to be like during the convention."
Noting that the Republican convention spans several days, Dunn said he expects the numbers of demonstrators this summer "will certainly be as big as anything in recent New York City protest history."
"It's going to be quite a week," he said.
Garden party
New York turns into one big party - the Republicans' party - when the GOP comes to town for its .rst New York national convention. If you're in the neighborhood, here's what it'll look like around Madison Square Garden:
1. Madison Square Garden: At least 50,000 delegates, media, corporate executives and GOP workers, gather Aug. 30 for four days as Republicans nominate George W. Bush for re-election.
2. Eighth Avenue: On Aug. 29, up to 250,000 protesters hope to march along Eighth Avenue from 23rd to 81st streets and then turn into Central Park for rally on Great Lawn.
Police, Parks Department have rejected it.
3. Alternate route: Police want Aug. 29 protesters to march along 10th Avenue from 14th to 34th streets, then turn east on 34th to Eighth Avenue, then north to 57th Street, then west to 11th Avenue, then south back to 14th Street.
4. Westin New York, Times Square: Conventioneers reserved blocks of spaces for parties.
5. Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers: Seventh Avenue at 53rd Street; home to New York's delegation. Among 24 hotels in New York where delegates and alternates will sta y.
6. New York Marriott Marquis: 46th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue; will house 173 delegates, 170 alternates of the California delegation.
7. Hilton New York: Sixth Avenue between 53rd and 54th streets; will house Texas delegation.
8. Up to 10,000 NYPD: Patrolling area surrounding MSG, in addition to federal
and state law enforcement units and private security .rms.
9. Penn Station: Stops for Amtrak, NJ Transit, LIRR, and seven subway lines; no train or subway car gets into the station without a search by bombsnifiing dogs.
10. Planned 140-foot pedestrian bridge: To be completed July 16, across Eighth Avenue from MSG to Media Center at Farley Post Office Building on west side of Eighth Avenue. As many as 15,000 media reps expected.
11. Time Warner Center: 59th Street and Columbus Circle. Media Welcome Party Aug. 28.
12. Salute to Broadway: On Aug. 29, more than 13,000 delegates and guests treated to eight shows, starting at 5 p.m. 13. Macy's: Security expected to be tight around the Herald Square landmark, as extra visitors crowd the famed store.
14. Proposed security perimeter: Limited pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic from Seventh to Eighth avenues, from 29th Street north to either 34th or 35th streets.
OFF-SITE CONVENTION EVENTS
Tavern on the Green
Closed for private GOP events during part of convention.
Ellis Island
Hottest ticket in town, the joint California-New York delegation soiree.
Rockefeller Center AIDS benefit Sept. 1 will feature entertainment by country singers Brooks
& Dunn.
TENTATIVE
CONVENTION SCHEDULE
Monday, Aug. 30
Convention opens, welcome speeches
Tuesday, Aug. 31
Adoption of rules, party platform
Wednesday, Sept. 1
President Bush nominated.
Thursday, Sept. 2
Vice President Cheney nominated; president's acceptance speech.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. |
