NEW YORK — I arrived in our nation’s Apple through Penn
Station, expecting the worst. The angry tone of the Democrats had
served, I was told, to make careerist protesters of the anarchist
movement and the anti-global movement angrier than ever and eager
for violence. Yet at Penn Station all was quiet. The masses of New
York cops seemed relaxed. Some were clearly bored. The only
inconveniences I spied were barricades that directed me from my
favorite exits for taxis to exits for the subway, which I took.
Again there was only calm. The subway was crowded but nothing was
amiss.
On the streets there are ten thousand members of the NYPD night
and day. There are barricades. Still the city remains relatively
peaceful. The large demonstration of Sunday was peaceful. How do we
explain this? The anti-globalists and anarchists who brought chaos
to Seattle and Genoa are supposedly here in New York too. Yet aside
from isolated melees they have yet to bring the city to a stop.
Sources in and around the police department tell me the low level
of violence is something the NYPD had been planning for throughout
the past year. To begin with, the cops set out to infiltrate the
organizations that were planning the demonstrations. Equally
important they developed strategies to allow demonstrations but to
contain violence.
“Containing demonstrations and carefully stepping aside to give
room for violence. This is a major challenge and a major skill,”
reports a long-time observer of the NYPD. He notes that New York
has had no major riots since the 1980s. Violence was greatly feared
at this convention owing to the huge number of Democrats, who
account for 80% of the registered voters in the city. Moreover,
police spies had picked up word that violence was being planned.
Yet by slipping around violent demonstrators and containing them so
their violence did not become infectious the police have kept the
convention sites relatively peaceful and secure.
In walking the streets and viewing the demonstrators my mind
went back to Chicago and the riot that broke out at the Democratic
Convention in 1968. I spent time observing the demonstrators there
and got away just before their taunting of the cops was crowned
with victory, namely, a police onslaught. The demonstrators in
Chicago were more homogeneous than the demonstrators here. They
were mostly middle-class white students, opposed to the Vietnam
War. Hillary Rodham was there. Possibly Bill Clinton and
Jean-François Kerry were also there.
Here in New York the demonstrators are more diverse. There are
old folks from the traditional anti-war organizations. There are
members of the underclass, desperate and rather pathetic
flounderers in the American rat race. Then there are the loony
anarchists and anti-globalists. In the 1960s we always wondered who
was financing the demonstrators. Some of us thought Moscow was
writing checks. Yet who could possibly be funding our current
crazies? It is a question I would like to see answered.
There are college students here, but they are not nearly as
dominant as the college contingent in the 1968 protests in Chicago.
Another difference is that these college demonstrators are more
polite than the demonstrators in Hillary and Bill’s day. The
Chicago demonstrators were carefully trained to provoke the police
to rampage and they succeeded. It is different here. The NYPD is
better prepared to simply suffocate the violent types.
Yet all is not bliss. Sometimes the cops have acted without very
good judgment. Sometimes they have actually swept up journalists
and jailed them along with the protesters, despite the fact that
the journalists were carrying proper credentials and in no way
participating in protest. Sometimes the journalists they lock up
are actually favorably inclined towards the police. In fact I
actually know of one such innocent victim. He is Shawn Macomber, my
first-string reporter covering the convention for The American
Spectator. For an hour or so the cops and federal police
agencies bounced him back and forth between them, asking questions,
checking his credentials, and eventually taking the credentials
from him before placing him in a cell with forty slightly loco
demonstrators. Then the cops committed one more blunder. One of
them mentioned that Shawn was from The American Spectator,
provoking a dismal night for him during which he was taunted
ceaselessly by his cellmates.
Yes, the NYPD is well trained in crowd control, but there are
lapses even among the well-trained. I rather doubt Shawn is going
to be writing as favorable a piece as this one about the NYPD. But
first I want him to consult our lawyers. Then I want the name of
the moron who mentioned his affiliation with the magazine as he was
being locked up with these loutish demonstrators.
