Anti-Bush Protesters Held, NY Courts Clogged By Grant McCool
NEW YORK (Reuters) - About 200 activists swarmed into Grand Central Station on Thursday, hung banners and chanted "Fight AIDS (news - web sites), not war" on the day President Bush (news - web sites) ends the Republican convention by accepting its nomination for another term.
Police said 19 people were arrested after they sat down around the information booth in the train station's main concourse and refused to move at the height of the morning rush hour. Many protesters say the Bush administration has not done enough to fight AIDS.
The incident pushed to 1,796 the people arrested in a week of demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience against the U.S.-led war in Iraq (news - web sites) and other Bush administration policies, according to police figures. It includes 15 arrested this week protesting inside the Madison Square Garden convention hall.
One consequence of the large number of arrests, a record for a U.S. political convention, has been a strain on the court system to formally charge people within 24 hours as required by law.
On Thursday, New York State Supreme Court Judge John Cataldo ordered that 500 people who had been held for more than 40 hours should be processed and released by the end of the day.
Meanwhile, 55 people awaiting arraignment said they were on hunger strike until all those arrested were released. They were not eating but still drinking liquids.
"We feel due process is being dragged out," one hunger striker, Joaquin Ryan, 35, an editor with a New York publishing firm, said in an interview by mobile phone from "central booking" at police headquarters. "We had to make a statement."
FAMILIES WAIT
About 300 friends and family of the protesters were waiting in a park across the street from the courthouse, including the mother of 19-year-old student who was arrested on Tuesday.
"My son was demonstrating peacefully against the war," said Connie Steensma, 54, of New York. "Protesting peacefully is part of the American system."
Activists of the A31 Action Coalition and civil liberties groups complained that police have been over-zealous dealing with peaceful protests, sometimes arresting people who were passers by. But New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said officers had been restrained amid provocation from demonstrators.
Police said that among items confiscated from protesters were gas masks, homemade forearm pads and other types of protective gear, marbles, spray paint and razors and jagged-edged wooden poles.
At Grand Central Station as thousands of commuters were arriving in the city for the work day, protesters from AIDS activist groups ACT UP and Housing Works released two banners and colorful balloons in the high-ceilinged main concourse. The banners said "America has AIDS" and "Cure AIDS." Then 200 protesters strode into the building chanting "Fight AIDS, not war" and other slogans.
The four-day convention ends on Thursday night when Bush accepts the nomination to run against Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) of Massachusetts in the November election.
Anti-war protests were planned near Madison Square Garden and in Manhattan's Union Square at the time of the president's speech.
(Additional reporting by Jeanne King and Mark McSherry)