Garden Infiltrated

A small band of protesters posing as dutiful Republicans managed to infiltrate and briefly disrupt a Republican event yesterday in Madison Square Garden, which had previously been able to seal out anti-Bush demonstrators.Arrests were sharply lower than Tuesday, when police clamped down on a series of illegal protests throughout Manhattan with a wave of arrests.At about noon, while White House chief of staff Andrew Card was speaking to a gathering of young Republicans, several AIDS activists apparently posing as clean-cut Bush supporters stood up shouting slogans and blowing whistles.Mr. Card, who was just introduced on stage by President Bush’s daughters, reportedly ignored the protesters and continued with his speech.It took about 20 seconds for security agents to quash the surprise protest and arrest the participants, who were screaming, “Bush lies! Drop the debt! Stop AIDS!” The protesters, who belonged to the New York group ACT-UP, also ripped off their shirts to reveal white T-shirts displaying similar slogans.Two security officials dragged one protester on her knees along the red carpet out of the convention area. One actual young Republican was allegedly struck in the temple by one of the protesters during the scuffle, the Associated Press reported. Police arrested 12 people, charging them with disorderly conduct and one person with assault.The New York City Police Department said all of the 12 protesters had proper Republican National Convention credentials. Four of them had been previously arrested in a convention-related “naked” protest on August 26.A spokesman for ACT-Up, John Riley, wouldn’t say how members of his group managed to penetrate tight convention security but said, “They got in legally.” Another infiltrator from the group, who was acting as an “observer,” avoided arrest, Mr. Riley said.Mr. Riley said the purpose of the protest was to demand that the Bush administration support “100% debt relief” for AIDS-ravaged African countries in order to free up money for health programs. “It was successful,” Mr. Riley said of the protest. “We interrupted the White House chief of staff on live TV.”A spokeswoman for the Secret Service, Ann Roma, said the agency does not consider the sneak protest a “security breach.” She said they had received the “appropriate tickets” from convention organizers and passed through a metal detector before entering.There were 20 convention-related arrests yesterday, down from more than a thousand on Tuesday, which was said to be a city record number of arrests in a 24-hour period. The total number since last Thursday is 1,767.Police said not a single person was arrested during the largest protest yesterday, a labor demonstration with an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people marching on Eighth Avenue between 23rd and 30th streets.As protest organizers denounced Tuesday’s arrests, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday defended the tactics of the police department, which rounded up protesters marching without permits before they could make it to the convention site.“This was a game for a bunch of hooligans who wanted to come here,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “They didn’t want to protest, they didn’t have any messages, they just wanted to break the law. And I have no tolerance for that.”Police released photos yesterday of gas masks, marbles, and razors that had been confiscated from the arrested protesters. Marbles are used to make horses and motorcyclists lose their footing.Yesterday, small hordes of recently jailed demonstrators gathered in clumps at different locations throughout New York with sullied clothes and stories of one-night prison stands.Behind police headquarters in lower Manhattan, recent arrestees waited in line holding property vouchers looking to recover confiscated wallets, back packs, sunglasses, along with other personal items.Across from the criminal courts building at 111 Centre St., demonstrators waited for friends to be arraigned.Meanwhile, a staff reporter for a conservative magazine, the American Spectator, who was assigned to cover a Tuesday protest in Lower Manhattan, got swept up in a mass police arrest and spent a night in a holding cell.Shawn Macomber was one of about 200 people arrested during a War Resister’s march uptown near Ground Zero along Church Street.Police arrested the demonstrators after some of them allegedly failed to walk on the sidewalk in pairs, as they were ordered to do because they didn’t have proper permits. After police cordoned off the area, Mr. Macomber, who was wearing an RNC press credential, said he informed police that he was a reporter.He said a Secret Service agent then interviewed him and verified he was a credentialed reporter by checking his ID and calling his Manhattan hotel. The agent informed police that Mr. Macomber was a reporter for the American Spectator, but a short time later he was handcuffed and put on a bus en route to a West Side holding facility, Mr. Macomber said.He said an officer told him, “Enjoy your night in jail.”“I feel like police in most of the protest situations restrain themselves,” Mr. Macomber told The New York Sun from his hotel near Madison Square Garden hours after his release. “It was a little disconcerting yesterday.” He said three other journalists were arrested along with him.Some protesters detained with him, he said, viewed his arrest with glee after they discovered he worked for the American Spectator, a staunchly conservative and pro-Bush magazine. One person told him, “Now, you see what it’s like,” Mr. Macomber said.Mr. Macomber, a one-year veteran of the magazine, was detained for about 14 hours, charged with disorderly conduct, and slapped with a summons.NYPD Commissioner Paul J. Browne said police are not supposed to arrest journalists covering protests as long as the person isn’t a “participant in any illegality.”“From time to time, reporters covering events will get caught up in the arrest,” said Commissioner Browne, who said the police department would investigate the incident.Earlier in the morning, in one of the more peaceful demonstrations, about 5,000 protesters for about 15 minutes formed a symbolic unemployment line stretching on sidewalks from Wall Street in Lower Manhattan to Madison Square Garden. Mostly silent, the protesters held up fluorescent pink fliers that read, “The next pink slip might be yours!”

Garden Infiltrated

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