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 RNC Displaces NYC's Homeless |
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Blog submitted by CfDnews on Wed 4 Aug 2004 - 13:49 h |
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by William Burnett
Madison Square Garden, New York City – site of the 2004 Republican National Convention.
It is also home to many who do not have a home. Scores of homeless New Yorkers congregate throughout the night at Madison Square Garden and at other key locations around the West Side of Midtown Manhattan. Those spots are familiar to the homeless denizens who frequent them. Many of those places are well lighted and they provide a minimal sense of security and stability to their homeless inhabitants who have very little of anything else they can count on.
A number of churches and community-based organizations routinely bring food and other services directly to the homeless population at these very locations. In addition, a network of churches throughout Midtown Manhattan and surrounding areas sponsor regularly-scheduled soup kitchens that the homeless population, and others who would otherwise have to choose between eating and paying their rent, have come to rely on.
Having stable locations to congregate, affords the homeless a reliable means to build relationships among each other that are essential to their personal sanity and sense of mutual support. In essence, an underground community exists among the homeless in New York City every bit as strong as – in NYC, one could argue stronger than – the community enjoyed by domiciled residents in any given neighborhood.
For the Summer of 2004, all of that is changing. The Republican National Convention starts on August 30 and will run to September 2. From August 29 to September 3, New York City, in coordination with Federal agencies, will be setting up a frozen zone in Midtown Manhattan covering the area from 31st Street to 33rd Street between 7th and 9th Avenues; making it all but impossible for the homeless in the area to maintain any semblance of their stabilizing routine. Moreover, security measures will be enacted well beyond the frozen zone, potentially shutting off free access to soup kitchens and various services previously available to the homeless. Even New York City’s main post office – with the general delivery address the homeless rely on for their mail – will be affected.
As part of the security measures, anyone approaching close proximity to the frozen zone will have to produce legal identification to security officials and demonstrate a legitimate business interest for being in the area. Obviously, those measures are producing great anxiety among the homeless population; many of whom have no identification to produce, legal or otherwise.
Furthermore, “legitimate business interest” is not clearly defined. The language, itself, rose out of concerns local businesses had voiced to the City and the RNC preparation committee about how the Convention would impact business in the surrounding neighborhood. After substantial lobbying efforts, Picture The Homeless, a grassroots coalition of New York City’s homeless (an exclusive article about Picture The Homeless will be published here at Catholics for Democracy in the very near future), had secured verbal commitments, from representatives of NYPD and RNC’s preparation committee, that visiting soup kitchens and other places providing services to the homeless will be treated as legitimate business. NYPD also agreed to accept makeshift identification produced by agencies that provide services to the homeless. Both declined, however, to put any commitments in writing; and warned that confusion on the first day of the Convention may result in individual officers not following through with that commitment. Another source further warned that the Secret Service could potentially trump any concessions NYPD makes. Moreover, Picture The Homeless is now left with the daunting task of getting the word out to the vast population of homeless in the City that they need to secure some kind of identification from the agencies they rely on for services in order to approach the frozen zone during the days of the Convention.
Another planned security measure will involve federal agents and NYPD patrolling subway trains with bomb-sniffing dogs. On its face, this is a reasonable measure. New Yorkers are rightfully concerned about potential designs terrorists might have in disrupting business in the City during the Convention. Many in the homeless community, however, ride the subway throughout the night in order to escape the elements and to get some semblance of rest. Heightened police activity in the subways would make the homeless – already regular victims of police harassment -- particularly vulnerable to security-related abuses. New York City has no ordinances currently on the books making it illegal for the homeless to ride subway trains. They do, however, have ordinances – like not allowing people to lie down on a train and not allowing passengers to occupy a second seat with bags or other possessions – that are frequently used by NYPD to justify arresting homeless persons who ride the trains. Picture The Homeless attempted to get a commitment from NYPD that security measures enacted for the Convention will not result in increased harassment or arrests of homeless people. The only commitment Picture The Homeless could secure, however, was NYPD’s assurances that the attention of law enforcement would be focused on more pressing matters involving security of the Convention.
The City of New York is not waiting for the start of the Convention to begin clearing the homeless out of view of the elite G.O.P. delegates. Representatives from Picture The Homeless have already observed a dramatic increase in interactions between NYPD and the homeless community around the vicinity of Madison Square Garden over the course of the last couple of weeks. While official statistics may not be readily available -- and one would not expect NYPD to keep records that could publicly expose their harassment of the homeless -- the homeless themselves have taken notice. As a result of the increased harassment, many of the regulars from around Madison Square Garden have been forced to migrate uptown to Central Park West between 105th Street and 110th Street. One could anticipate that it is only a matter of time before the domiciled residents in that area invoke the City’s well-touted quality of life laws to demand NYPD push the homeless out of their neighborhood.
To be fair and balanced in my reporting, Republican National Convention volunteers worked at the Bowery Mission food pantry on the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the Democratic National Convention. That maneuver was transparent on its face. It was a well-orchestrated public relations move carried out by the RNC even as the Convention prepares to temporarily displace the homeless.
After September 3, things should pretty much return to normal for the homeless population in the City That Never Sleeps. Until then, however, the Republican National Convention is proving a tremendous hardship to the very New Yorkers who could least afford any more disruptions in their lives. So much for compassionate conservatism.
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CfD News
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Cry of the Poor |
"How can it be that even today there are still people dying of hunger? Condemned to illiteracy? Lacking the most basic medical care? Without a roof over their heads? . . .
"Christians must learn to make their act of faith in Christ by discerning His voice in the cry for help that rises from this world of poverty."
-- Pope John Paul II
Novo Millennio Ineunte, no. 50
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