Keep off your grass

(by mgh)

Like someone who keeps clear plastic coverings on his new couch, the Bloomberg administration has announced that the Great Lawn in Central Park is off-limits for large gatherings in order to protect the grass.

While the Philharmonic and the opera will continue to hold four concerts per year drawing as many as 50,000 people each, only two other annual gatherings that size will be permitted, raising concerns that the mayor is transforming the park into a playground for the cultural elite. Large demonstrations, like the ones during the Republican National Convention that Bloomberg and the Parks department silenced, would not be permitted.

Not unfounded are the suspicions that the move is politically motivated: In a city of 5 million Democrats, guess which way most protests lean? The desire to protect the city's single biggest emerald plaza is sound - even admirable! - but it cannot come at the expense of the city's single biggest town square.

Bloomberg needs to find a new place for New Yorkers to peaceably assemble that's as good as the Great Lawn, or else find a compromise that kills neither the park's greenery nor his constituents' first-amendment rights.

After all, Mike, who paid for that grass?

As the song goes:

They took all the trees,
and put 'em in a tree museum.
And charged the people
a dollar and a half just to see 'em.

Not far from wrong, Joni... but under Bloomberg, the subway costs $2.

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Keep off your grass

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