Say It Ain't So, Bloomy!

Did NYC officials deny Central Park protest okay during the 2004 Republican convention for political reasons (ignoring the understandable irony of needing a 'permit' to protest in America)? Not that it was ever really in doubt, but now it seems there is proof...

NY Times: In Court Papers, a Political Note on ’04 Protests

When city officials denied demonstrators access to the Great Lawn in Central Park during the 2004 Republican National Convention, political advocates and ordinary New Yorkers accused Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of squelching demonstrations that could embarrass fellow Republicans during their gathering.

The Bloomberg administration denied being guided by politics in banning the protests. Instead, officials said they were motivated by a concern for the condition of the expensively renovated Great Lawn or by law enforcement’s ability to secure the crowd.

But documents that have surfaced in a federal lawsuit over the use of the Great Lawn paint a different picture, of both the rationale for the administration’s policy and the degree of Mr. Bloomberg’s role in enforcing it.

Those documents, which include internal e-mail messages and depositions in the court case, show that Mr. Bloomberg’s involvement in the deliberations over the protests may have been different from how he and his aides have portrayed it. They also suggest that officials were indeed motivated by political concerns over how the protests would play out while the Republican delegates were in town, and how the events could affect the mayor’s re-election campaign the following year...

File this one in the "duh" column.

(Not that anything will come of this, I believe, much to the chagrin of angry New Yorkers.)

[Related documents]