NYPD Buffers Pope from Protest, by Andy Humm, Gay City News, April 24, 2008

NYPD Buffers Pope from Protest

By Andy Humm
Gay City News
April 24, 2008

http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19515872&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=569341&rfi=6

The New York Police Department consigned several groups protesting Benedict XVI on Saturday, April 19 to pens three blocks south of where he was at St. Patrick's Cathedral and blocked them from his view with massive city trucks as his popemobile passed them after services, even though spectators with signs of welcome were allowed to line Fifth Avenue.

The protestors included small groups of survivors of sexual abuse by priests, atheists, and a handful of the New York Clowns cavorting in the spirit of ACT UP's Operation Ridiculous.

John Maynard (on bagpipes) and Brendan Fay (holding the banner) remember fire department chaplain Mychal Judge, "Franciscan Priest gay man," who died on 9/11 on the eve of the pope's visit to Ground Zero.
Photo by Garry Rissman

"You have a legal right to be in reasonable proximity to your target of protest," said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). This action by the police violated dissenters' constitutional right to be within "sight and sound" of Benedict, he said.

NYPD spokesman Chief Michael Collins said that representatives of the demonstrators and the police legal department met and "agreed the site was within sight and sound." Collins did not address the fact that the city's use of sanitation trucks in front of the demonstrators prevented them from being seen by the pope as he left the cathedral.

Collins said there was a ticketed area on the sidewalks just north of the cathedral for supporters of the pope, controlled by either the Archdiocese or the Secret Service, but not the NYPD.

"There was no organized demonstration north of that area," he said, but added that "nobody stopped" members of the crowd in those public areas from holding up signs either for or against Benedict.

"I've never seen three blocks between protestors and counter-protestors," said NYCLU's Dunn, noting that the groups excluded from Benedict's route "could file a damages action."

Ken Bronstein, president of NYC Atheists, said his group had wanted to protest in front of St. Patrick's but were relegated away from the pope and the crowds greeting him. "We're looking into taking action," he said.

"Mayor Bloomberg and [Police Commissioner] Ray Kelly used police state tactics on Saturday to push protest so far away from the pope that it was Siberia," said longtime gay and anti-war activist Bill Dobbs, who participated in the Clowns' action. He also said that the media, whose performance marked a low point in the tradition of providing critical coverage, "failed to look for protest."

"I don't think people in power in New York City care whether their restrictions on demonstrators are legal," said Ann Northrop, a veteran lesbian and AIDS activist. "My experience in the last 20 years of demonstrating is that the entire agenda of the police department is to do whatever they want to shut down dissent and worry about the consequences later and I see no signs that they have any intention of changing their strategy. They don't care about the First Amendment or anybody's civil rights."

The NYCLU settled several cases this month resulting from the police crackdowns on protest against the Iraq War in 2003 and of the Republican National Convention in 2004. In those settlements, police agreed not to let mounted police charge crowds without warning and the opportunity to disperse, not to trap protestors in pens, and to guide demonstrators to protest sites rather than impeding them.

The New York Clowns were few in number, but spirited. They got nowhere near the pope but did ride right next to his empty popemobile in front of Grand Central Terminal as it headed for St. Patrick's. A black SUV escorting the empty, bullet-proof vessel nudged the clowns on bikes and they were briefly detained by police and asked for identification.

"As someone said in a Woody Allen movie, 'If Jesus Christ came back and saw what was happening in his name, he wouldn't be able to stop throwing up,'" said Hank-Tears-of-the-Clown-Clown, aka civil rights activist Ben Shepherd.

The virulently anti-gay clan headed by the Reverend Fred Phelps from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, home of their God Hates Fags Ministries, said they protested Benedict at all his Washington and New York stops. Margie Phelps said they got within six feet of him when he visited St. Joseph's Church on the Upper East Side.

Despite Benedict's condemnation of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, Ms. Phelps said, "God hates the pedophile pimp pope," and would "drop-kick" Benedict into hell along with unrepentant gay people when they die. She said that as Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, the number-two man in the Vatican, "his job was to shuffle around the pedophile priests." That critique was not widely heard during the pope's US visit, most commentators instead praising Benedict for repeatedly apologizing for the abuse scandal and meeting with a select group of survivors.

Robert Costello, president of A Matter of Truth, a survivor group protesting on 47th Street out of view of the pope, said Benedict's meeting with survivors was "arranged secretly, just like the abuse. We need acknowledgements of guilt and a plan of action, not words."

"He needed to sit down with parents of those who committed suicide," said Malyetta Dussourd, a Boston women who had three sons and four nephews abused by the notorious Reverend John Geoghan, who was convicted and subsequently murdered in prison. "He sat down with those who are confused."

Some members of the Washington chapter of Dignity, the LGBT Catholic group, held up their banner on Rock Creek Parkway in the capital as the pope passed by in his vehicle. Raymond Panas, the chapter president, told the Washington Blade, "He obviously saw us and waved at us, so I think we got our message across."

Benedict was the Vatican official instrumental in banning Dignity from meeting in Catholic churches and facilities beginning in1986.

Brendan Fay, a gay activist and friend of Father Mychal Judge, the out gay fire department chaplain who died heroically on 9-11, cancelled a demonstration at Ground Zero during the pope's Sunday morning visit there because he saw no opportunity to get near it when the police created a frozen zone for blocks around the World Trade Center site. Instead, he led a procession past the site the evening before bearing a banner with Judge's likeness and the words "gay man" among Judge's descriptors.

"For the Catholic gay community he was family as well as our priest," said Fay. "We called on him during the darkness of the AIDS crisis."

Benedict made no mention of Judge, his famous brother priest, in his statements at Ground Zero, though he did greet the fallen hero's surviving twin, Dymphna Judge Jessich.