Wussy Protesters

United for Peace and Justice, the organization applying for parade permits to protest the Republican National Convention in New York, originally requested the use of Central Park’s Great Lawn for a gathering of about 250,000 protesters. When the city agency in charge of issuing permits declined their request, they UPJ agreed to an absurd solution: being shunted to the narrow strip of asphalt called the West Side Highway more than a mile away from the convention site, in an area devoid of restaurants and restrooms where water could be obtained.

Now UPJ is balking at a deal they shouldn’t have cut in the first place, which makes them look doubly wanky.

UPJ should tell the Bloomberg Administration that 250,000-plus people are coming to New York, like it or not. Plane tickets have been purchased, buses chartered. Central Park was never the right spot anyway: protesters should be, and the First Amendment grants the right to be, directly out front of the convention site at Madison Square Garden, right at the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 33rd Street. Who cares about permits? Organizers should instruct everyone to meet at the Great Lawn and march down Seventh to the RNC. Face it: the NYPD cannot and is not inclined to arrest 250,000 peaceful marchers. And if they are, well, all the better for the spirit of civil disobedience.

Nothing is more sickening than the current “left’s” excessive penchant for compromise with Constitution-hating neofascists.