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Reply to "August 29 March and Rally- The Motherboards Marches"

Thanks for calling our attention to this development Empress. I just found further developments on this at of all places, Bloomberg online (The news agency the Mayor had founded):

Anti-War Group Again Seeks Permit for NYC Park Rally (Update2)

Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- An anti-war group planning a 250,000- person protest on the eve of the Republican National Convention in New York said it won't rally on Manhattan's West Side Highway, as agreed to last month with the city, and will file instead for a new permit to gather at Central Park.

United for Peace and Justice had accepted the highway site after officials led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused the group a permit for use of the park for the rally on Aug. 29, saying such a large gathering could damage the grass and create security concerns. The group reversed itself after doctors said the highway wasn't safe for senior citizens or children, technical advisers said the sound quality would be poor and affiliated organizations said they wouldn't attend.

``Under no circumstances will we go to the West Side highway,'' said Leslie Cagan, the group's national coordinator, at a press briefing at United for Peace and Justice's midtown Manhattan headquarters. ``Exiling a rally to a remote sun-baked highway makes a mockery of the right to assemble.''

The planned demonstration would be the largest of more than a dozen for which groups have obtained permits to coincide with the four-day convention at which President George W. Bush will receive his party's nomination for a second term. United for Peace and Justice said it still will hold an Aug. 29 march past Madison Square Garden, the convention's site, for which it obtained approval along with the highway rally.

``We can never put the rights of grass before the rights of New Yorkers,'' said City Councilman Bill Perkins, a Democrat from East Harlem, who joined Cagan at the briefing along with representatives from other anti-war and protest groups including Not in Our Name and Veterans for Peace.

Cagan said she had 1,000 volunteers prepared to re-seed the Great Lawn should any damage occur.

`Nowhere'

When it accepted the city's alternate site for their rally, Cagan said the group wanted city officials to supply drinking water, sanitary facilities and free transportation to and from the event, and demanded that police not use metal barriers to set up pens. She said the group had ``gotten nowhere'' after two meetings with police.

Paul Browne, the city's deputy commissioner for public information, said United for Peace and Justice still has its permits for the march on Seventh Avenue and the highway rally, ``and we're prepared to continue with that. If they announce a demonstration and don't use it, that's their problem.'' Robert Lawson, a spokesman for the mayor, deferred questions relating to the planned rally to the police department.

`Appalled'

Cagan said many people, including representatives from other groups, vowed not to attend the rally if it were held at the highway, which played into the group's change of heart. The site would have stretched more than 2.9 miles from Chambers Street in lower Manhattan, where a sound stage was to have been set up, north to 34th Street. The permit for the march allows the group to proceed north on Seventh Avenue from 23rd Street to the site of the convention at 34th Street.

``People are appalled at the fact that the city is being so difficult regarding the Central Park issue,'' said AiMara Linn, the media coordinator for Not in Our Name. ``We simply cannot accept no as an answer -- this is not about logistics, this is an issue of are we going to allow dissent to be marginalized.''

Should the city again reject the new permit application for a rally in Central Park, Cagan wouldn't say whether United for peace and Justice would file suit to overturn the decision.

``We would rather not use our time and energy and the taxpayers' money to go through the court process,'' Cagan said. ``I have no idea if it could be settled in court or not.''
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