Mammoth anti-Bush protest greets Republicans in New York
30 August 2004, Robert D. McFadden, The New York Times
NEW YORK -- A roaring river of demonstrators surged through the canyons of Manhattan on the eve of the Republican National Convention in the city's largest political protest in decades, a raucous but peaceful spectacle that pilloried George W. Bush and demanded regime change in Washington.
On a sweltering August Sunday, the huge throng of protesters two miles, or three kilometers, long marched past Madison Square Garden, the site of the convention that would open Monday, and denounced President George W. Bush as a misfit who had plunged America into war and runaway debt, undermined civil and constitutional rights, lied to the people, despoiled the environment and used the presidency to benefit corporations and millionaires.
The protest organizer, United for Peace and Justice, estimated the crowd at 500,000, rivaling a 1982 antinuclear rally in Central Park, and double the number it had predicted. It was, at best, a rough estimate. The Police Department, as is customary, offered no official estimate, but one officer in touch with the police command center at Madison Square Garden agreed that the crowd appeared to be close to a half-million.
The march, which took nearly six hours to complete, was a tense, shrill, largely choreographed trek from Chelsea to Midtown and back to Union Square, where it ended, as planned, without a rally. And while there were a couple of hundred arrests, the event went off without major violence, despite fears of explosive clashes with the biggest security force ever assembled in New York.
After the march, hundreds of protesters in a more belligerent mood made their way to Times Square and blocked the entrances of two Midtown hotels while another group harassed Republican guests at a party at the Boathouse restaurant in Central Park. But a post-march gathering on the Great Lawn of the park was peaceful.
At a news conference on Sunday night, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said there had been about 200 arrests, mostly for disorderly conduct.
"Organizers for United for Peace and Justice should be commended for keeping their word," Kelly said. "They pledged that their demonstrators would follow the march route and that's exactly what happened. It proceeded as expected and by and large was peaceful and orderly." He also praised officers for "commendable restraint," adding that: "they are consummate professionals and it showed today."
The relatively peaceful outcome of the enormous march seemed the result of various factors - a determined restraint by the marchers and the police, weeks of planning by organizers and city officials, and, perhaps not least, the subduing effects of an exhaustingly hot day, with temperatures of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, or 32 degrees Celsius, under a baking sun and humidity that soaked shirts and wilted all but the most aggressive spirits.
As the march unfolded, the 5,000 Republican convention delegates, their families and entourages began sampling the delights of New York, attending parties and Broadway matinees, dining in homes and elegant restaurants and taking in the Gotham sights. Vice President Dick Cheney, Governor George E. Pataki and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani gave speeches on Ellis Island, but took no note of the march. Bush campaigned in Ohio, working toward an arrival in New York on Thursday.The Republicans, some of whom regard protesters as little more than wild-eyed liberal wastrels, largely ignored Sunday's demonstration, but there were occasional encounters between delegates and demonstrators, like one outside a theater on 44th Street.
"Four more years," the delegates chanted.
"Four more months," the protesters responded.
Underlying Sunday's events was wide concern over a possible terrorist attack - premonitions of a catastrophe aimed at disrupting the Republican convention, the national elections and the American psyche three years after Sept. 11. Such fears were expected to be the subtext of events throughout the convention, which runs through Thursday.
In response, the city and federal governments have mounted a $65 million security operation, with warplanes enforcing a no-fly zone over Manhattan, an armada of Coast Guard cutters and police launches patrolling waterways and tens of thousands of police officers and military personnel guarding landmarks, the convention site and other potential targets, as well as overseeing the week's almost nonstop protests.
But there was no sign that a terrorist attack was imminent, and the focus of the day was on the protest march as a tide of chanting, placard-waving, lustily shouting demonstrators from across the region and around the nation converged on New York's sun-drenched streets in a boisterous, almost carnival mood that belied the serious intent of the demonstration.
The multitudes were packed as dense as broccoli florets, and they filled the entire two-mile route - so the head of the march reached Union Square even before the last of the marchers stepped off at 14th Street and Seventh Avenue.
After months of mounting anger at the president and frustrations over plans for a rally that finally was scrapped after a court upheld city objections to the use of Central Park for fear of damage to the Great Lawn, the day was an emotional crescendo for the participants, for organizers and for city officials.
For Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other city officials, who had spent days calling for a peaceful demonstration, the nonviolent outcome was gratifying, a testament to months of planning and training and an insistence on common-sense restraint by officers and marchers alike, and on carefully drawn rules to avoid needless confrontations.
For organizers who had also urged nonviolence, the outcome was gratifying and something of a relief. The leadership had voiced concern that any violence would play into the hands of Republicans, allowing them to caricature the protesters as anarchists, provocateurs and chronic malcontents.
The organizers said they were also pleased by the size and diversity of the turnout. The faces appeared to be a cross-section of the American experience. There were individuals, families and groups from many states and across the region and the city. There were young people and older citizens, families with small children, students and representatives of the middle and working classes and many organizations, including advocates of gay and women's rights, antiwar groups, immigrants, veterans, artists, professionals, religious organizations and proponents of education, health and other causes.
For many participants, there was also pride, and a kind of amazement, in being part of an event so large and diverse, and yet so pacific.
And there was a satisfying sense for many of having played a role in larger political processes, of doing something beyond voting to affect the outcome of an election widely seen as crucial to America's future on issues as varied as the war in Iraq, the huge national deficit, abortion, same-sex marriage, the environment and the nation's role in the world.
Gathering on the avenues and leafy residential side streets of Chelsea between 14th and 23rd Streets, the marchers stepped off shortly before noon, a cumbersome army led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the actor Danny Glover, the filmmaker Michael Moore and other celebrities.
Shorts and T-shirts, many branding Mr. Bush a liar, a criminal or a warmonger, were the uniforms of the day. Anti-Bush accessories went beyond banners, placards and buttons. There were fly swatters bearing Mr. Bush's face. Pallbearers carried a thousand mock coffins of cardboard draped in black or in American flags, representing the war dead in Iraq. And moving along the line of march was a papier-mâché tank with President Bush's head, wearing a cowboy hat, poking out the hatch.
On either side, the marchers were flanked by blue and camouflage-green lines of helmeted, flak-jacketed police officers and National Guardsmen, mostly watching quietly as the marchers moved north on Seventh Avenue toward the deckle-edged skyline of Midtown.
Overhead, police helicopters thwacked and a relentless sun beat down on the protesters and pavements.
Still, the protesters were exuberant. Shouting insults and obscenities at Mr. Bush, raising placards proclaiming "Drop Bush, Not Bombs" and "Eradicate Mad Cowboy Disease," they marched past the Garden hour after hour in masses that poured out barrages of abuse. But inside the Garden, no one was home to hear it. Aside from workers making final preparations, the arena was a decorous empty shell hung with patriots' bunting a day before the delegates' arrival. That hardly mattered to the protesters, whose outpourings were aimed mainly at news media, anyway.
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