------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 22, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
AS REPUBLICAN CONVENTION LOOMS: UNEMPLOYMENT, HOMELESSNESS GRIP CITY
By Greg Butterfield New York
Limousines, lavish parties and lockdowns: that's what City Hall and Wall Street are planning when the Republican National Convention occupies Madison Square Garden in New York City from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.
Republican delegates, coming here to nominate George W. Bush for another four years as president, might imagine they'll see the privileged New York of "The Apprentice," the dog-eat-dog "reality" show starring billionaire landlord Donald Trump.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg--another billionaire--certainly wants to maintain that façade for his fellow Republicans' visit.
But the reality for working-class New Yorkers is altogether different.
Profits have boomed for big companies and banks headquartered in the city's financial districts. But for millions of workers here--the majority of them people of color--the recession never ended.
Unemployment remains high. Rents are soaring. Hundreds of thousands of city workers, including teachers, health-care workers and firefighters, have gone without contracts or raises for several years.
The scourge of racist police violence is ever-present--and sure to worsen as the convention gets closer.
Bloomberg has told workers time and again to tighten their belts. Programs for human needs--already devastated under the reign of Rudy Giuliani and Bill Clinton in the 1990s--have been sacrificed, while tax cuts and tax breaks are the rule for big businesses.
MILITARIZING MIDTOWN
The New York Police Department expects to spend at least $76 million on convention security, the Daily News reported June 25--some $59 million just for police overtime.
This plan to militarize midtown Man hattan is so costly that Bloomberg has given up trying to sell New Yorkers on the convention with promises that it will bring revenue into the city.
Commuters are warned that subways--which millions of workers rely on to get to and from work--will be routinely disrupted. Drivers as well as subway riders will be subject to arbitrary searches.
A large swath of midtown Manhattan will be locked down before and during the convention.
Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly continue to stonewall on issuing permits to protesters, who in many cases applied a year or more in advance.
These measures are aimed at keeping demonstrators--expected to number in the hundreds of thousands--far away from the delegates, corporate funders, and especially the world media covering the convention.
A police-media scare campaign is in full swing. The July 12 Daily News front page screamed, "Anarchist threat to city." In the article, Commissioner Kelly alleged that unnamed groups of "hardcore protesters" plan to get around his police-state measures and thereby disrupt subways and traffic.
The story ran down a list of anti-globalization protests, including Seattle, Genoa and Miami, failing to mention that in all these cases cops attacked unarmed demonstrators.
The disinformation campaign is aimed at scaring New Yorkers, who are overwhelmingly anti-war and anti-Bush, from coming out and demonstrating at the convention, and to make workers blame youthful militants for any inconveniences, when the police and convention organizers are to blame.
Homeless people are also being targeted.
According to a June 25 press release from the mayor's office, pedestrians will need a "business-related purpose to enter" the area between West 31st Street and West 33rd, from 7th to 9th Avenues. The many homeless people who normally congregate around Pennsylvania Station will be driven out.
Among the casualties: hundreds who rely on soup kitchens like the one at the Church of St. John the Baptist. "They're basically going to shut us down," said Mary Bivona, a case manager with Cath olic Charities, which runs the food program.
"Before the 1992 Democratic National Convention, also held at the Garden, hundreds of homeless people reportedly 'disappeared' from the streets," said the July 5 edition of City Limits. "Norman Siegel, then head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, thinks there was an unofficial crackdown. 'I'm sure that's going to happen again,' he said."
HALF OF BLACK MEN JOBLESS
In May, the official New York metropolitan area unemployment rate was 6.2 percent--well above the 5.6 percent national rate, but still woefully underreporting the real extent of the jobless crisis.
Workers here were hit by a double whammy: first came the capitalist recession, followed by the destruction of the World Trade Center, which exacerbated but did not cause the crisis.
Federal, state and local officials poured billions of dollars into repressive measures at home and abroad, taking money away from social programs when they were most desperately needed.
Many workers have long since given up looking for work. Some are among the record 40,000 people sleeping in city homeless shelters every night, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.
A more accurate view was presented in February by the Community Service Society, which found that nearly 50 percent of Black men in the city were unemployed in 2003.
The crisis of unemployed workers, especially Black workers, hasn't lessened since then.
On June 21, over 500 women and men, mostly African American, marched from Ground Zero to City Hall Park, chanting, "What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now!"
The protest, supported by members of the City Council's Black and Latino Caucus and the Rev. Al Sharpton, called on the city to devote $20 million to create jobs for community members in the coming year--just a fraction of what's being spent on security for the Republican Convention.
These workers, like many others who will join protests and other actions during the convention, are right to take their struggle to the streets. They can't rely on the Democrats--whether it's the majority of the New York City Council, who passed Bloomberg's latest budget at the end of June, or presidential candidate John Kerry, who deliberately skipped a vote on extending unemployment benefits, sending the measure to defeat.
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