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.
Reprinted from the July 22, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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