NY protests steal the show (Int. Herald Tribune)

[joefree1]

News Analysis: New York protests steal the show
Todd S. Purdum/NYT
Monday, August 30, 2004

NEW YORK In a few dozen blocks of the same slender island, two worlds collided: the Republican convention's calculated claims to patriotism and the presidency met elaborately planned and heavily Democratic street protests that turned those same arguments back at President George W. Bush - in ways that might help, or hurt, both sides.
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The demonstrations Sunday were New York City's biggest in decades, and the most emphatic at any national political convention since Democrats and demonstrators turned against each other in fury over Vietnam in Chicago in 1968. But the first day was overwhelmingly peaceful, and the demonstrators doused a good bit of Bush's intended message with daylong television images of dissent.
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"New York certainly is an exciting city," Brad Freeman, a delegate from Los Angeles and one of Bush's old friends and longtime fund-raisers, said in one of the milder understatements since Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for the Dutch. "We'll have to wait until Friday to see what kind of a city it is for a Republican convention."

This was not the reception the Republicans had planned. They chose New York to evoke the moment of national unity that rallied Americans to Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, only to find protesters claiming that Bush had forfeited that goodwill by attacking Iraq. The marchers carried placards calling Bush "the next Milosevic" and demanding, "What would Jesus bomb?
More ...
http://www.iht.com/articles/536416.html

This story has got legs.


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[poliguru]

1. As long as it stays peaceful and aboveboard

[sui generis]

2. yah! serves 'em right for being in our face

they could have had their damn convention in Dallas and none of this would be an issue because the police would merely have "detained" the three dems that live here on made up traffic tickets until it was over.

(okay that was humor, there are more than 3 dems here, but it is a republican state)

[joefree1]

3. "A roaring river of demonstrators"

I love this one ...

Mammoth anti-Bush protest greets Republicans in New York
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.
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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.
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The protest organizer, United for Peace and Justice, estimated the crowd at 500,000, rivaling a 1982 antinuclear rally

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.
more ...
http://www.iht.com/articles/536446.html


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[PROGRESSIVE1]

4. kick!