Fortress Big Apple

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19297/

 

Fortress Big Apple

By Nicholas Turse, tomdispatch.com

 

Posted on July 21, 2004,

http://www.alternet.org/story/19297/

 

The tagline for John Carpenter's 1981 cult sci-fi

classic Escape From New York went " New York City is

now a maximum security prison. Breaking out is

impossible. Breaking in is insane. " In that movie set

in a then-unimaginable, futuristic " 1997 " Gotham,

criminal Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) was charged

with rescuing the President of the United States,

whose plane had been downed in the walled-in, armed

and angry prison island that Manhattan had become.

With his life and freedom riding on saving a man he

holds in contempt, Snake eventually fights an epic

battle in world famous Madison Square Garden in his

bid to save the president.

 

Today, as in the movie, many New Yorkers are angry at

the president, and as in Carpenter's grim vision of

the future, at least parts of New York City will be in

a state of lockdown for the President's arrival – with

a major showdown due to take place somewhere in the

vicinity of Madison Square Garden (MSG). In

Carpenter's future, Manhattan was a walled-in fortress

island under high-tech government surveillance,

guarded by heavily armed security forces, with

helicopters perpetually overhead – a futuristic

Alcatraz Island of epic proportions.

 

In our 2004, the authorities have an eerily similar

vision of how the city should be. Madison Square

Garden will be walled in by a fence or " other physical

barrier " with additional " movable barricades, "

complete with checkpoints reinforced with heavy

weapons. A new " closed-circuit surveillance video

system " will be introduced; armed federal agents and

police officers will be keeping watch; and plenty of

helicopters will be circling overhead. In Carpenter's

future, however, the government was in control and New

Yorkers were locked down. In our present, the Bush

administration and the Republican Party are the ones

retreating into a fortified bunker.

 

Once upon a time in a past not so long ago, New York

City was viewed by many in the Republican Party as an

enemy outpost in an alien land. Then came the 9/11

attacks and Manhattan became the Bush administration's

ground zero in its war against terrorism. On January

31, 2003, with a supposed easy victory in the upcoming

war with Iraq looming, it seemed the perfect place for

the President to begin an inevitable march to a second

term. But like the president's flight in Escape From

New York, things have gone awry. New York once again

looks like a threatening, alien land and the party of

the President whose greatest claim to fame is that

he's made Americans " safer " is about to treat the city

as if it were Baghdad.

 

The free-speech limiting, life-disrupting,

artificial-reality-inducing security " bubbles " that

empty the globe's central cities as George Bush and

Dick Cheney travel through them, are already well

known. From August 30 through September 2, when the

Republican National Convention invades New York, the

GOP wants to see the same – a Manhattan emptied of

life and the entire event " bubble-ized. " The estimated

48,000 people who will attend the Convention including

2,509 delegates and 2,344 alternate delegates, their

hotels, their outings, their travels around the city,

the massive media presence (sequestered away in the

Farley Post Office Building, connected to MSG via an

enclosed, climate-controlled pedestrian bridge to be

built across Eighth Avenue); along with the RNC's

convention headquarters at Madison Square Garden will

all be locked inside that bubble – and kept from the

sight of the feared hundreds of thousands of citizens

heading for the Garden to tell the President he's " not

welcome. "

 

To contain protesters and " protect " GOP'ers and fellow

travelers, New York City is engaging in some of the

same sorts of permit games that typified the 1968

Democratic National Convention in Mayor Richard J.

Daley's Chicago. For example, Republican Mayor Michael

Bloomberg's office has, with a helping hand from the

city's parks department, thwarted efforts of the

national coalition, United for Peace and Justice, to

secure a permit for a march ending in a large-scale

demonstration in Central Park. Officials have cited

fears that the park's grass, home in the past to large

demonstrations and huge concerts, would take a

beating. Just recently, Police Commissioner Raymond

Kelly decreed that the Park would be off-limits, as

would Times Square. Instead, UFPJ was told it could

utilize the sure-to-be-sweltering, distant West Side

Highway. Even in Snake Plissken's Manhattan, Central

Park was open!

 

Bloomberg and his associates clearly hoped that a lot

of tough talk, terrorist alerts, and traditional New

York City Police Department tactics – interlocking

metal barriers (if not closed pens), horses, street

closures, misinformation (telling protesters they

can't enter a certain area or sending them on wild

odysseys to non-existent protest entry-points), and a

conspicuous show of uniformed and riot-gear clad force

– would contain protestors inside a police-imposed

bubble, if not simply scare them off. The NYPD is, of

course, a massive army unto itself; a force of about

40,000, approximately 6,500 of whom are slated to

" patrol the Garden, hotels, bridges and tunnels,

protest sites and points of interest for delegates "

while another 5,500 have been assigned to patrol the

subway system, commuter trains and the railroad and

bus stations. Roughly one-third of the department,

armed with handguns, batons, and tear gas canisters –

and some, apparently inside a new state-of-the-art

SWAT vehicle – are to be deployed in support of the

convention.

 

Back in February, this was considered more than enough

manpower for whatever was coming and tough-talking

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne simply stated that the

city's police did " not anticipate the need for federal

troops " to augment their forces. Since then, however,

fears of the size of the coming protest – given

growing dissatisfaction with the Bush administration

and possible uncontrolled, autonomous protest actions

across all five boroughs – led New York officials to

take another tack. Raymond Kelly, the city's

pistol-packing Police Commissioner (he carries a .38

in an ankle holster), soon flip-flopped on his

department's position, noting, " If people want to give

us help, we'll take it. "

 

With the chief moving in reverse, and fearing the NYPD

might be outnumbered and overwhelmed, New York

governor George Pataki made the call to Homeland

Security Secretary Tom Ridge requesting federal

assistance and, on July 9th, Ridge (with Pataki,

Bloomberg, and former mayor Rudy Giuliani in tow)

announced that the Department of Homeland Security

would be designating the Republican National

Convention in New York (like the DNC in Boston, which

is undergoing its own lockdown) a " National Special

Security Event. " With the invocation of that status

the NYPD was relegated to a backseat role, while the

United States Secret Service became the " lead agency

for the design and implementation of the operational

security plan. "

 

By the end of August, at least portions of the Big

Apple will be under the control of the Feds just as

director Carpenter imagined it. In fact, at least " 75

government entities " of all stripes including the FBI

and the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be

involved. The Secret Service will, according to

Bloomberg's office, be " supported by... [the] Federal

Aviation Administration (FAA), and the Department of

Defense. " Further, the FBI field office in New York is

already engaged in pre-convention work, with nearly

all of its 1,100 agents in the field " collecting

intelligence " and attending to " other security tasks. "

Given the FBI's past COINTELPRO exploits, there's

little doubt what kinds of activities these are likely

to be. The NYPD will also be in on the black-bag

action. The NYPD's crack Intelligence Unit was already

caught, by Massachusetts State Police no less,

allegedly spying on protesters out of state.

 

During the convention, the department will reportedly

be dispatching plainclothes and uniformed operatives

to " landmarks, tourist sites, sites related to the

convention, bridges and tunnels, airports and other

places where people gather. " U.S. Immigration and

Customs Enforcement's Federal Protective Service will

" be placing additional security at federal facilities

in the vicinity of the Republican National

Convention, " and U.S. Air Marshals will be " working

closely with other federal law enforcement agencies to

support the Secret Service. "

 

In addition to the myriad federal agents, uniformed

and undercover NYPD cops, and various federal and

local agent provocateurs crawling about, the military

will be called out in a show of force. In the skies

above the city, along with helicopters, there will be

fighter jets from a National Guard unit based in Troy,

NY. And, as in Iraq, private contractors won't be left

out in the cold either. As private security personnel,

they will reportedly be hired to guard hotels and

other venues where delegates and Republican officials

will be holed up.

 

To sum up the " security " scene: Choppers hovering

above; military fighters streaking overhead; under

foot, fumbling with cameras they never seem to know

how to work, those famously easy-to-spot undercover

cops clad in bulky sweatshirts (no matter the

weather); federal suits listening to their earpieces;

protective fences; " frozen zones " (huge swaths of

" public " city streets to ordinary citizens); metal

barriers; " vehicle checkpoints around the perimeter of

the Garden manned with heavy weapons, dogs, and

portable Delta barriers, which are enormous metal

contraptions that lie almost flat in the road and can

be raised very quickly with the flip of a switch " ;

mounted police; cops on bikes and scooters; NYPD K-9

units; stormtrooper-esque " Hercules " teams;

conventional " arrest teams " ; cops boarding commuter

trains and subway cars one stop before they reach Penn

Station, the hub nearest the Garden; permit refusals;

murmurs about the invocation of an 1845 law

prohibiting mask-wearing under certain circumstances;

and Kelly and Bloomberg periodically claiming to know

protesters' plans or issuing wild claims about the

supposed plans of violent anarchists, " hard-core

groups... looking to take us on " ; and various

administration officials issuing vague but chilling

warnings of possible terrorism to come.

 

The intended effect of all this, in addition to

keeping the city and nation in a state of fear and

making their now insecure leaders the most " secure "

people on the planet, is obviously to dishearten,

frighten, and intimidate prospective protestors – that

is, citizens who want to exercise their right to

protest George Bush and his policies. Just as

obviously, as happens in such situations, no one seems

to be more convinced by their propaganda than the

propagandists. Without a single protestor appearing,

the GOP, the mayor, the NYPD and the Feds are visibly

running scared. The President, the GOP, and the entire

administration crave an empty, sterile, " bubble-ized "

Manhattan with a few orderly protesters, divided and

penned up in out of the way places. They aim to turn

Madison Square Garden and the surrounding area into

something resembling the " Green zone " in Iraq – a

little enclave unto itself, fully fortified, insulated

from the popular will or just ordinary life. The

Village Voice recently discovered that residents of

Penn South, a 3,000-unit cooperative development near

Madison Square Garden, had received a memo from their

development's management company, coupled with a press

release from Bloomberg's office, advising " f at all

possible, [they] stay inside during the times the

convention is in session. "

The President, who continually tells us that our world

is safer due to him, aims to arrive in an alien " New

York City " out of some lock-down sci-fi movie – a

place specially prepared to make him the safest man on

Earth. And yet New York isn't a stage set and the best

laid plans of frightened and controlling officials do

have a way of coming undone, just as they did last

February in New York when, having been prohibited from

marching, hundreds of thousands of protesters,

directed toward police " pens " snarled traffic and

literally took over large portions of the city. Who

knows in what strange ways life will burst into New

York despite official efforts to empty the city and

lock down Madison Square Garden? For as the folks at

the RNCNotWelcome.org Collective note:

" If we are diffused throughout the city, we will have

a much better advantage. After all, the real target is

not Madison Square Garden, the stage of the spectacle,

but the various events where deals are made – where

the lobbyists wine, dine, and bribe Bush & Co. [T]he

RNC has promised to stage events and photo ops in

every borough of the city, not just in Manhattan. If

we are truly everywhere in this very big city, the

police cannot be concentrated in one area... "

In John Carpenter's vision of the future New Yorkers

had lost their war against an American police state.

In our present, it's up to the rest of us to make sure

that doesn't happen. Only we can burst Bush's bubble!

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights

reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/19297/