Democratic NYC Braces For the GOP Some Gird for Action; Others Plan to Flee
By Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A01
NEW YORK -- Bernice Sacks has spiky red hair and the silky voice of a veteran coach of jazz singers, and as she walks Mootzie, her apricot-colored toy poodle, she contemplates the coming Republican deluge.
She just knows some Republican delegate from someplace such as Oklahoma will wander into Balthazar or Danube, her favorite lunch spots. Sacks is a liberal with many decades in this city, and she's quite prepared to behave herself. Except those New York tables are squeezed so tight.
"You can always hear what someone else is saying; it's what makes New York so rich," Sacks says. "But if someone gets all hawkish and gung-ho, then of course I'll jump in."
She catches herself. "I'm not going to insult any Republicans. But I will get on my soapbox."
Residents of this vastly Democratic city are preparing for the Republican convention, which begins Aug. 30, in somewhat the same fashion that residents of a medieval city steeled themselves for a great siege. Some are packing their belongings and running to the hills (the Berkshires) or the sea (the Hamptons). Some counsel resolute defiance and plan to take to the streets in protest marches. Still others hope to do all of that, and make a buck or two subletting their apartments to Republicans.
So the ads began appearing months ago on the Internet. "$2200/1br-Duplex/Penthouse/two-level Roof Terrace for GOP Convention week. Sleeps eight." Or "2br-RNC Weekend Hideaway: Funky Historic Railroad Apt. Just Far Enough Away."
That second apartment was advertised as suitable for Republicans, or protesters, or possibly both, although if he gets a bipartisan share, actor Michael Weiner might pack away his crockery.
"I'm trying to cash in, I suppose," said Weiner, who grew up in Washington but has lived here for years. "I hear a lot of murmuring from my friends about wanting to get out of town, but I think I'll stick around. I'm a performing artist, and watching this convention come to this town promises some esoteric joy."
Alas, New Yorkers' desire to reap an extortionate profit has been dealt a blow these past few weeks. Notwithstanding the hundreds of advertisements for apartments with plasma screen TV-AC-dry cleaning-treadmill-and-concierge services -- one bedroom, sleeps nine! -- a disconcerting number of Republicans have booked hotel rooms, which are cheaper and come with fresh sheets every morning.
In what is normally a slow week for visitors, city officials predicted that nearly 50,000 people will come for the convention and spend more than $265 million. But some business owners think those estimates are inflated. Hotel managers have cut their rates, in part because no one except Republicans and protesters appear to be coming to New York that week.
"I gave up trying to rent it. The only people I heard from were reporters," said Sara R. Glassman, 29, an editor who briefly advertised her apartment on the Web. "But you are correct in assuming that I'm leaving town. I saw that commercial with Ed Koch telling us to welcome the Republicans. Well, good luck on that!"
It's not as though the city has withdrawn its collective welcome mat. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg -- who converted from Democrat to Republican just before his 2001 campaign -- notes that 20,000 New Yorkers have volunteered to be convention hosts. And Councilman James Oddo, one of three Republicans on the 51-member City Council, looks forward to sharing beers with a few comrades in arms for a change.
"Outnumbered? It'll be nice not to have to hold party meetings in a telephone booth," Oddo said. "And let me tell you, it's not like Bloomberg is exactly a red-blooded Republican."
That said, on many middle- and upper-class blocks, dozens of New Yorkers spoke of clearing out. They've listened to the news and looked at the plans -- last Friday's Newsday featured a large cover photo of riot-geared cops and the headline "NYPD: We're Ready" -- and figure this particular New York week can go forward without them. Even if Osama bin Laden stays in his cave, and the protests and rallies go smoothly, who needs police dogs sniffing at your heels and street closings and anarchists and all that?
"A lot of people are skedaddling, trust me," said David Barton, who plans to open a new gym in Chelsea that week. "I'll be here, but I really wish they'd chosen another borough."
Omar Wasow, executive director of BlackPlanet.com, said he's going to pass the week at a wedding in Sonoma Valley, Calif. Most of his buddies are steering clear of the city, too, but he's a bit blue at missing the action. "It's going to be the same war zone . . . I've grown to love," he said. "I actually would have enjoyed the spectacle of it."
Jason Croy waves at a visitor through the window of his West Village hair salon. He has red-rimmed glasses, a red bandanna and a que sera, sera take on the Republican convention. "Every client is leaving and everyone else is trying to," he said, adding that his partner does expensive floral arrangements and is a whirling dervish as the convention approaches.
He leads a visitor to his small kitchen, where he cracks open a beer. "I'm going to play it by ear. I'm opening for business, but the only people I can see making money, I guess, is the hookers."
Politics will keep some from fleeing. Manhattan is one of the more liberal stretches of real estate in the Western world (435,000 Manhattanites voted for Al Gore, while 79,000 voted for George W. Bush), and many New Yorkers regard it as their civic obligation to shake a placard and chant at those Republicans in Madison Square Garden. Paul Ricciardi, an actor, summers in Provincetown, Mass. But duty calls.
"I'm coming home early on Sunday to protest," he said. "I don't like the way the president is running the country."
Then there's Bernice Sacks, the red-tressed jazz coach of many decades vintage. She's sort of looking forward to all of these delegates in town, if only for the frisson of the unusual.
"Actually, I've never run into a Republican in New York," she said. "I hope that some come sightseeing on the Upper West Side and see me and say: 'Look at that weird-looking lady. She must be a Democrat.' "
Tourists are pleasantly surprised when New Yorkers act as friendly and polite as the people back home in Maybury. However, delegates to this month's Republican National Convention shouldn't expect to be treated to our standard out-of-towner treatment. The Republican delegates here to coronate George W. Bush are unwelcome members of a hostile invading army. Like the hapless saps whose blood they sent to be spilled into Middle Eastern sands, they will be given intentionally incorrect directions to nonexistent places. Objects will be thrown in their direction. Children will call them obscene names.
They will not be greeted as liberators.
Well aware that it is barren soil for their party's anti-urban, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, overtly racist ideology, Republican leaders have wisely avoided New York City as a convention site for the past 150 years. Even as the rest of America turns red, we New Yorkers remain as liberal as the people's republic of San Francisco: fewer than 18 percent of the citizens of New York's five boroughs (which include relatively conservative places like Staten Island) cast ballots for Bush/Cheney in 2000. But White House strategist Karl Rove sees the continued exploitation of 9/11 for partisan political gain as Bush's key to victory in November. That means bringing the big bash three miles north of the hole where the Twin Towers used to stand, where most of the victims of 9/11 were burned, suffocated, impaled and pulverized.
Making hay of the dead is also the point of this confab's timing. The 2004 Necropublican National Convention is being held a full month later than normal, from August 30 to September 2. The original plan was to have Bush shuttle between Madison Square Garden and Ground Zero for photo ops to coincide with the third anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Bush's visits to the Trade Center site were quietly canceled a few months back after 9/11 survivors expressed revulsion at the idea. But it was too late to change the date.
Anti-Republican sentiment is rising to a fever pitch here as the dog days tick down to the dreaded affair. A poll cited by the local ABC affiliate shows 83 percent of New Yorkers don't want their city to host the RNC. And many of them are planning to do something about it.
Rejecting ex-mayor Ed Koch's call to "make nice" with the party that used the deaths of 2,801 New Yorkers--most of them Democrats--for everything from tax cuts for the rich to building concentration camps at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib to invading Iraq (news - web sites) to enrich Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and his fellow Halliburton execs, some groups are encouraging liberal-minded New Yorkers to volunteer for the city's squad of official greeters. Creatively altered maps of streets and subways will be handed out to button-clad stupid white men. Other saboteurs wearing fake RNC T-shirts will direct them to parts of town where Bush's policies have hit hardest. Rumor has it that prostitutes suffering from sexually transmitted diseases will discourage the use of condoms with Republican customers.
Anywhere between 250,000 and 1,000,000 anti-Bush demonstrators are expected to hit the streets of Manhattan, but the city and protest organizers can't agree on where to put them. Activists say they'll direct marchers to Central Park, their preferred site; city officials are threatening mass arrests if they do. Adding to the already combustible Chicago '68 vibe is a possible wildcat strike by city cops and firefighters. And now, as if everyone concerned wasn't already tweaky, FBI (news - web sites) agents are traveling around the United States, to harass members of leftist groups planning to protest the New York RNC.
Strikebreaking policemen and private security personnel may be able to keep the protesters away from the convention hall. But Republicans who venture outside the Garden deserve the abuse ordinary New Yorkers will likely inflict upon them.
True, the Administration eventually coughed up the $20 billion aid package Bush promised the city after 9/11. But that sum--equal to the cost of occupying Iraq for four months--barely made up for such disaster-related expenses as police overtime, debris removal and rebuilding damaged subway stations and tunnels. New York's economy hasn't even begun to recover. As the nation's official unemployment rate hovers at six percent, the city's runs around eight. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, opposes virtually every Bush Administration decision concerning New York City.
Even viler than Bush's urban neglect is his failure to avenge the World Trade Center victims as he pledged to do on 9/14, dusty firefighter helpfully posing under his arm on The Pile. After 9/11, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) were in Pakistan. They and the Taliban received funding from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The 19 hijackers, organized by Egyptian Islamic Jihad, were Egyptian and Saudi. But Bush didn't attack Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. He went after Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq instead, nations that had nothing to do with 9/11 but offered business opportunities for GOP-connected oil concerns. Incredibly, he siphoned more money and arms to the Egyptians, Saudis and Pakistanis.
Not only did Bush let the terrorists get away, he raised their allowance.
If today's GOP retained a shred of the dignity and patriotism that it once possessed as the Party of Lincoln, it would have dumped Bush in favor of a candidate more interested in defending America than his wealthy contributors. Republicans are neofascists now, and that's why New Yorkers good and true will be yelling at them to go back home.
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