West Side Highway, here we come

On Wednesday, United For Peace and Justice announced that it is accepting Bloomberg's site for the rally on Sunday, August 29th. In defeat, UFPJ said that " We did not make this decision lightly. " Their full statement about the issue is available here.

I think they make some good points for why they did this, though I'm certainly frusturated. Of course, it's easy for all of us who aren't actually organizing the thing to comment from our armchairs that they should have fought it out to the end.

The way they conceded defeat, though, was ineffective, and further backs them into a corner. With their statement they include four demands. One demand, for example, is that the city provide shuttle bus transportation from the rally site to the subway, as the rally is not very close to any subway stops whatsoever (which looms as nothing less than a tremendous problem).

But what does UFPJ have left to barter with? Nothing. UFPJ could have at least tried to get a deal out of the city, somehow. But now they've given up the moderate amount of threat-power they had, and the city now has no reason to give them any of their four requests.

One of the requests looks to be a huge tactical mistake: demanding that the city not use pens. It was just a few days ago that a court ruled that the city can't use pens, unless it has a specific threat. By now demanding that city not use pens, the organizers are already ceding the idea that the police will completely ignore the court's ruling.

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Meanwhile, in Boston, a judge gave one positive and one negative ruling on Thursday in regards to DNC plans. ANSWER's march on Sunday will now be able to go on Causeway Street, right near the Fleet Center, but the "free speach zone" somewhat near there will not be physically ammended in the ways organizers had argued for, and in fact the allowed crowd size will be decreased to one thousand. If you're the 1001st protester, you don't even get to be in the [dirt field surround by serious fences and tall netting that isn't even within view of where the delegates will be going in and out of the convention]!

Here's the story on the two rulings, from the AP.