Replies

http://1010wins.com/topstories/winstopstories_story_163195305.html

1010 WINS | 1010wins.com
Anti-War Group Gets 'OK' to March Past Convention
Jun 11, 2004 7:51 pm US/Eastern

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly disclosed Friday that the Police Department has told an anti-war group it can march directly past Madison Square Garden on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

But Kelly also criticized the group, United For Peace and Justice, for repeatedly postponing closed-door negotiations to finalize plans for the mass demonstration. He warned that further delays could jeopardize its chances for a permit.

"It will simply not be possible to accommodate the UPJ event unless the details of the plan are resolved promptly," Kelly wrote to a lawyer representing the group.

Copies of Kelly's letter were distributed to reporters on Friday. Telephone calls to the lawyer, Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, were not immediately returned.

A spokesman for United For Peace and Justice, Bill Dobbs, said Kelly was "overreacting." The group asked to delay the meeting with police officials for two weeks in hopes of first convincing Mayor Michael Bloomberg to allow a rally in Central Park, he said.

"We are continuing to fight for a basic constitutional right to protest," he said.

Police officials had been tightlipped about how they plan to accommodate large demonstrations amid heightened security outside the convention -- scheduled for Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 -- and whether protesters would be kept at a distance.

Since the parks department rejected the anti-war group's application for a rally on the Great Lawn in Central Park on Aug. 29, protest organizers have rejected several alternate sites suggested by the NYPD, Kelly said.

"In an effort to move this matter forward, you were informed ... that the department would consider an event that included a march past Madison Square Garden," the commissioner wrote.

One proposal would have the protesters march past the arena on either Seventh or Eighth avenue to a rally site on a blocked-off section of the West Side Highway.

The city has set a Tuesday deadline for march permit applications; so far, about a dozen groups have applied. City officials say they are trying to weigh all the permits together to better plan for the convention.

United for Peace and Justice has signaled it may file a lawsuit over the Central Park permit request. It also has launched a petition drive calling on Bloomberg to allow the event to go forward.

The parks department has twice denied the group a permit, saying its projected attendance of 250,000 people exceeds the Great Lawn's capacity of 80,000.