XPost: talk.politics.taxation, talk.politics.assassination, nyc.seminars 
 XPost: ny.politics 
 From: rosaphilia@webtv.net 
  
  Subject: [noRNC] Fortress Big Apple 
  
 Fortress Big Apple 
 By Nicholas Turse, tomdispatch.com. 
  
 Posted July 21, 2004. 
  
 From August 30 through September 2, when the Republican National 
 Convention invades New York, the GOP wants to see a Manhattan emptied of 
 life and the entire event 'bubble-ized.' Story Tip-Toeing on the 
 Platform The tagline for John Carpenter's 1981 cult sci-fi classic 
 Escape From New York went "New York City is now a maximum security 
 prison. 
  
 Breaking out is impossible. 
 Breaking in is insane." 
  
  In that movie set in a then-unimaginable, futuristic "1997" Gotham, 
 criminal Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) was charged with rescuing the 
 President of the United States, whose plane had been downed in the 
 walled-in, armed and angry prison island that Manhattan had become. 
  
 With his life and freedom riding on saving a man he holds in contempt, 
 Snake eventually fights an epic battle in world famous Madison Square 
 Garden in his bid to save the president. 
  
 Today, as in the movie, many NewYorkers are angry at the president, and 
 as in Carpenter's grim vision of the future, at least parts of New York 
 City will be in a state of lockdown for the President's arrival €€ 
  
 " with a major showdown due to take place somewhere in the vicinity of 
 Madison Square Garden (MSG). In Carpenter's future, Manhattan was a 
 walled-in fortress island under high-tech government surveillance, 
 guarded by heavily armed security forces, with helicopters perpetually 
 overhead €€" 
  
 a futuristic Alcatraz Island of epic proportions. 
  
 In our 2004, the authorities have an eerily similar vision of how the 
 city should be. Madison Square Garden will be walled in by a fence or 
 "other physical barrier" with additional "movable barricades," complete 
 with checkpoints reinforced with heavy weapons. 
  
 A new "closed-circuit surveillance video system" will be introduced; 
 armed federal agents and police officers will be keeping watch; and 
 plenty of helicopters will be circling overhead. 
  
 In Carpenter's future, however, the government was in control and New 
 Yorkers were locked down. In our present, the Bush administration and 
 the Republican Party are the ones retreating into a fortified bunker. 
  
 Once upon a time in a past not so long ago, New York City was viewed by 
 many in the Republican Party as an enemy outpost in an alien land. 
  
 Then came the 9/11 attacks and Manhattan became the Bush 
 administration's ground zero in its war against terrorism. On January 
 31, 2003, with a supposed easy victory in the up- coming war with Iraq 
 looming, it seemed the perfect place for the President to begin an 
 inevitable march to a second term. 
  
 But like the president's flight in Escape From New York, things have 
 gone awry. 
  
 New York once again looks like a threatening, alien land and the party 
 of the President whose greatest claim to fame is that he's made 
 Americans "safer" is about to treat the city as if it were Baghdad. 
  
 The free-speech limiting, life-disrupting, artificial-reality-inducing 
 security "bubbles" that empty the globe's central cities as George Bush 
 and Dick Cheney travel through them, are already well known. 
  
 From August 30 through September 2, when the Republican National 
 Convention invades New York, the GOP wants to see the same €€ 
  
 " a Manhattan emptied of life and the entire event "bubble-ized." 
  
  The estimated 48,000 people who will attend the Convention including 
 2,509 delegates and 2,344 alternate delegates, their hotels, their 
 outings, their travels around the city, the massive media presence 
 (sequestered away in the Farley Post Office Building, connected to MSG 
 via an enclosed, climate-controlled pedestrian bridge to be built across 
 Eighth Avenue); along with the RNC's convention headquarters at Madison 
 Square Garden will all be locked inside that bubble €€ 
  
 " and kept from the sight of the feared hundreds of thousands of 
 citizens heading for the Garden to tell the President he's "not 
 welcome."" 
  
 To contain protesters and "protect" GOP'ers and fellow travelers, New 
 York City is engaging in some of the same sorts of permit games that 
 typified the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Mayor Richard J. 
 Daley's Chicago. 
  
 For example, Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office has, with a 
 helping hand from the city's parks department, thwarted efforts of the 
 national coalition, United for Peace and Justice, to secure a permit for 
 a march ending in a large-scale demonstration in Central Park. 
  
 Officials have cited fears that the park's grass, home in the past to 
 large demo- nstrations and huge concerts, would take a beating. Just 
 recently, Police Com- missioner Raymond Kelly decreed that the Park 
 would be off-limits, as would Times Square. 
  
 Instead, UFPJ was told it could utilize the sure-to-be-sweltering, 
 distant West Side Highway. Even in Snake Plissken's Man- hattan, Central 
 Park was open! 
  
 Bloomberg and his associates clearly hoped that a lot of tough talk, 
 terrorist alerts, and traditional New York City Police Department 
 tactics €€ 
  
 " interlocking metal barriers (if not closed pens), horses, street 
 closures, mis- information (telling protesters they can't enter a 
 certain area or sending them on wild odysseys to non-existent protest 
 entry-points), and a conspicuous show of uniformed and riot-gear clad 
 force €€" 
  
 would contain protestors inside a police-imposed bubble, if not simply 
 scare them off. 
  
 The NYPD is, of course, a mas- sive army unto itself; a force of about 
 40,000, approximately 6,500 of whom are slated to "patrol the Garden, 
 hotels, bridges and tunnels, protest sites and points of interest for 
 delegates" 
  
 while another 5,500 have been assigned to patrol the subway system, 
 commuter trains and the railroad and bus stations. Roughly one-third of 
 the department, armed with handguns, batons, and tear gas canisters 
 €€ 
  
 " and some, apparently inside a new state-of-the-art SWAT vehicle €€ 
  
 " are to be deployed in support of the convention. 
  
 Back in February, this was considered more than enough manpower for 
 whatever was coming and tough-talking NYPD spokesman Paul Browne simply 
 stated that the city's police did "not anticipate the need for federal 
 troops" to augment their forces. 
  
 Since then, however, fears of the size of the coming protest €€" 
 given growing dissatisfaction with the Bush ad- ministration and 
 possible uncontrolled, autonomous protest actions across all five 
 boroughs €€ 
  
 " led New York officials to take another tack. Raymond Kelly, the city's 
 pistol- packing Police Commissioner (he carries a .38 in an ankle 
 holster), soon flip-flopped on his department's position, noting, "If 
 people want to give us help, we'll take it." 
  
 With the chief moving in reverse, and fearing the NYPD might be 
 outnumbered and overwhelmed, New York governor George Pataki made the 
  
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