Spectre of fear could spoil President's party

By ROGER FRANKLIN

No New York official has yet found the honesty to say it, but sooner or later someone at City Hall will have to admit that the decision to invite George Bush and his Republicans to hold their nominating convention in New York was, without the shadow of a doubt, the worst decision made in Manhattan since the Indians sold the place to Dutch settlers for $22 dollars worth of beads and blankets.

At the time it seemed like a good idea. Ground Zero was still smoking, long lines of laid-off office workers queued outside job fairs, and fear was very much in the air.

That was when the Republican National Committee decided to stand in solidarity with the beleaguered Apple. Rather than waste time considering alternate locations, it settled straight away on New York. The decision to bring 65,000 conventioneers, reporters and lobbyists to the city would be an immense shot in the arm for the local economy, not to mention a display of defiance.

The other motives were unsaid, although the proposed timetable made them pretty obvious. Republican organisers insisted on the first four days of September, a week before the third anniversary of the massacres and as late in the political season as electoral laws would allow.

What they envisioned was George W. Bush accepting the nomination with images of Ground Zero and heroic firemen projected behind him, to acclamations of "Let's roll in the war on terror."

As political theatre, it was to be a stage manager's dream. "Although New York is a town of Democrats, it will belong to the Republicans," promised mayor Mike Bloomberg, who insisted the locals would welcome their ideological opponents.

That was then. Today, with just two months to go, it's all seeming a bit different, especially to the likes of Myrna Logan. Out of a job for more than a year after September 11, the 46-year-old single mother and Twin Towers refugee eventually found work in the West 30s, where she manages an importer's office. Madison Square Garden is just up the road, and lately the local cops have been anything but reassuring.

"I called the precinct to see what we need to do so our people can get into work," Logan said last week. "The cop said it would be best to give everyone the week off because there are no guarantees. I got the impression that whatever is expected, it's mostly trouble."

Logan's reading of the situation is probably right. Far from the welcoming atmosphere Republicans expected, what they will be walking into is an urban landscape of protest and paranoia. In the worst possible case, it will be another terror attack.

"Al Qaeda may want to use a large political event as a target as they did in Madrid ... as a way of infiltrating a political climate and the outcome of the election," said NYPD Commissioner Paul Brown, one of the few officials to say on the record what the rest of the city is thinking. He was sanguine about his department's ability to keep the streets safe, but it's inconceivable that preparations, no matter how thorough, can foil every possible plot.

And if Osama bin Laden's devilment is an unknown quantity, the intentions of homegrown protesters are not. At last count, close to 20 groups have applied for permits to stage rallies and marches. So far, the police have scotched every application. But again, no one believes rubber-stamp rejections are any defence against activists fired up about everything from gay marriage to the Iraq war.

"When you're protesting in New York City, you're definitely in the big leagues," said John Sellers, director of the California-based Ruckus Society, which trains activists in protest tactics. Though Sellers has said his graduates won't be looking for a fight, there is little comfort for New Yorkers in that promise, since his personal definition of "violence" is rather narrow.

In 1999, after riots organised by the Ruckus Society shut down Seattle during a meeting of the World Trade Organisation, Sellers put it this way: "I make a distinction between violence and destruction of property. Violence to me is against living things. But inanimate objects? It may be violence under the law but I just don't think it's violence."

That is one man's perspective, and its narrowness does nothing to calm Myrna Logan, who explained that closing her office, as the police suggest, simply isn't an option. "We organise just-in-time shipments from all over the world," she said.

"How can I tell our customers that they will have to shut their production lines because we can't get into our office?"

So she's praying that the Republican Convention goes off without a hitch. "But if you ask me," she added, "I just wish they were meeting somewhere else." Nine million fellow New Yorkers can only agree.