Smafty Mac: Fighting the kakistocracy!!!

The Lawn in Central park is more important than your freedom of speech!

Mayor Michael Bloomberg lobbied hard to attract the Republican convention to New York this summer. Now it's coming, and with it swarms of protesters. The city is obliged to offer hospitality to both the conventioneers and the demonstrators. A group opposed to the Bush administration's policies has applied to hold a march and a rally in Central Park, but the city has turned down the request without offering a reasonable alternative site. The city's position shows a lack of respect for the First Amendment, and is an invitation to disorder.

The group, United for Peace and Justice, applied last June for permits for a march and a rally of 250,000 people on the Great Lawn in Central Park. The group says the Great Lawn is one of the few places in Manhattan that can accommodate a rally this big. In the past, it has been the site of numerous large protests, concerts and other events, including a 1982 antinuclear rally attended by 700,000 people.

But since then, the Parks Department has invested millions of dollars in replanting and landscaping the Great Lawn, including an elaborate underground irrigation system. The city claims that the area is no longer appropriate for very large events, and it is directing the protesters to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens instead of Central Park, or to a circuitous route through the streets of the far West Side.

Neither option is acceptable. City Hall may want to declare Manhattan to be a no-free-speech zone for convention week, but critics have a right to gather in the same borough as the conventioneers they are protesting. Making a parade route available in Manhattan is not enough. The demonstrators have a right to a central rallying place in which they can speak and be heard. Depriving them of that would also present a far greater threat of spontaneous protests the police might not be able to control.

The city has not allowed events with hundreds of thousands of people on the Great Lawn since it was rebuilt in 1996, though it has given permits for ticketed events sponsored by large corporations. The carefully protected lawn is now lush and beautifully landscaped, but at a cost. Allowing the exercise of free speech is just as much a key function of the city's parks as allowing softball or in-line skating.

The Parks Department's dismay at the possible destruction of the grass and shrubbery is understandable. But if the mayor wants to protect the greenery, he is obligated to find an equally good place for the demonstrations. In this era of highly scripted conventions, the protests outside the convention hall may offer the most authentic political discourse of the week. When the nation watches what happens in New York during the convention, we want everyone to fully appreciate the glories of the city, and the way it has come back from the disaster of 9/11. But viewers also need to see a New York that is and always has been a place in which political expression is valued and protected.

So the Bush and the Cabal can exploit the people murdered on 9/11.

There was 500,000 people for the Simon and Garfunkel concert but your rights don't match up to "bridge over troubled waters"

|