In 1773, they risked lives to speak out
July 25, 2004, New York Newsday.com


In Boston in the morning I am walking by the Old South Meeting House, which has a sign on the front saying that it was at this spot in 1773 that Samuel Adams gathered 5,000 people and started the Revolutionary War.

I know it from grammar school, but when you see it here, even for the hundredth time, the effect causes the heart to vibrate. Adams and the 5,000 put their bodies up. Looking at the simple words on the sign caused you to wonder how many people could get together today, even with no threat to their lives as in Adams' group, for a cause that would upset the government.

The 9/11 commission report says everybody in the last couple of governments, and all the congresses with them, left the citizens of New York unprotected. They don't name those most responsible: Clinton, Gore, Bush and Cheney. Their governments took trillions upon trillions to defend us and they did nothing. The Bush people then acted like any dumb rich men. They went after bin Laden's bank accounts. They made glorious announcements about how this was going to bring him in. Now they find it got them nothing.

The president sat frozen in a classroom in Florida. Every single solitary member of the government was among the missing. Nobody is indispensable. If they don't resign they are mutts. It is a great national failure that nobody ever quits.

That brings you to the sign about Samuel Adams.

A simple, needed protest march in New York at the Republican convention becomes vital to Democracy because, to your dismay and disgust, it now is being blocked by an unconscionable act of the city government of New York.

The parade is supposed to pass Madison Square Garden on the Sunday before the convention. That is as it should be. The crowd can be large, over 250,000; the Republicans are not popular here. The protest committee wanted to walk past the Garden and go straight up to Central Park. The mayor and the police commissioner say that Central Park cannot be used because too many feet would hurt the grass. This is an absolutely insane statement.

The city also said it was too small an area. The part of the Central Park they want can hold all of the city of Shanghai.

The police commissioner, Ray Kelly, told the march committee that they could not walk to Central Park. It is my way or no way, he said. A flaring ego and chin out arrogance. Kelly is far better than this. He also is being put in the kind of trouble that gets you a new police commissioner. In Kelly's time on the job there have been 10 police commissioners. Kelly twice. If that doesn't tell him something.

New York City has a policeman, a municipal servant, who suddenly is in charge of free speech. Only the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, can push him into this. That probably explains Kelly. But why Bloomberg opposes his citizens walking to Central Park, is a maddening puzzle. Looking at it, there has to be some diabolical reason for it. I believe one is apparent.

The mayor loves the war because Bush loves it. He says he follows Bush so the Republicans send funds to New York. They don't send the city the right time. They do pretend that they are going to let Bloomberg into their parlor. They'll come into his parlor to take home money. And he does what they want. He has his police order the protest to go on the West Side Highway and then down to Chambers Street for a rally that is as close to the World Trade Center as you can get. The Republicans planned to hold the convention here in New York to bring back Bush's great moment: Up there atop a wrecked fire engine with a retired firefighter who was presented in a hero's pose. What a president! "Bring 'em on." It fooled most of the country. Then his campaign against terrorists turned into a disaster in Iraq, and the Trade Center, under examination, became an absolute failure.

But if you can put a lot of protesting Democrats near the Trade Center, this stone conservative, religious right-wing George Bush and his people can point to the crowd and say, "Sure, look at them, no decent American would be in a demonstration at this spot. These people say the world is not safer since we captured Saddam Hussein. That's un-American. Of course it is safer. The only thing that has happened is a bunch of soldiers being killed every day. I will show you how indecent they are: They hold up signs asking me where is bin Laden."

This suspicion alone should cause the hundreds of thousands to rail and refuse to follow the parade route because it is the work of dictatorship. The marchers need neither permit nor official route designed to ruin them. Once past Madison Square Garden, they can just go for a walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon and let the sun shine on the right to free speech and assembly that Samuel Adams and his 5,000 risked their lives to bring us.