UfPJ abandons West Side Highway rally plan
From their listserv
WE ARE MARCHING! On August 29, United for Peace and Justice will hold a massive, impassioned, peaceful, and legal march past Madison Square Garden, the site of the Republican Convention, to protest the Bush Administration’s deceit and destruction.
But we will NOT be rallying afterwards on the West Side Highway. As we announced in a press conference today, exiling us to a remote stretch of sun-baked highway makes a mockery of our right to assembly: The deal is off.
Then why the hell did you originally agree to it? A chimpanzee with a hangover could have deduced an isolated section of freeway in August with no shade or water would be a terrible location for an antiwar rally.
Central Park is the only sensible place for us to rally. We filed a new permit application today with the NYC Parks Department to rally in Central Park on August 29, using the Great Lawn, North Meadow, and East Meadow.
Join the club, latecomer! ANSWER, NION and many others are applying for permits, and ANSWER is going to federal court “to support the right of assembly in the Great Lawn in Central Park for all those who are expressing political opposition” to Bush and the war machine.
That’s what UfPJ should have done several weeks ago when NYC rejected their permit for a Central Park rally on the laughable grounds that all those people might hurt the grass. (I am not making this up!) They should have gone to court then. But they didn’t, and instead meekly accepted the West Side Highway location. And they only bailed from that because of the pressure they were getting from activists.