Convention Planning 101

Every time we think Los Angeles’ political leaders could not find a way to more thoroughly confuse planning for the Democratic National Convention in August, they surprise us. The latest mess involves preparation for protesters. But luckily there’s time--just barely--to recoup and be ready.

The saga starts with a well-publicized promise in the spring of 1998 by Mayor Richard Riordan and prominent businessmen including Eli Broad. They said they would bring the Democratic convention to Los Angeles without a dime of direct taxpayer subsidy. That sounded great, but it was, as an old saying goes, too much sugar for a dime. They couldn’t deliver; they managed to raise more than $30 million but still wound up having to beg the City Council--known for its chilly relations with Riordan--for $4 million. Many taxpayers, egged on by the politically astute if opportunistic Councilman Joel Wachs, vented their ire at the request. By the time of the council vote, the mayor was struggling to scrape up the eight votes he needed for approval of the $4-million bailout.

That put council member Jackie Goldberg in the driver’s seat. She came armed with a list of demands straight out of a hippie’s anti-establishment handbook. The councilwoman insisted that the expected 10,000 to 50,000 protesters officially be given downtown’s Pershing Square as their gathering place; a larger, LAPD-backed site nearer the Convention Center would never do, she said, because it wouldn’t be centrally located or close enough to the powerful people staying at the Biltmore Hotel, which is right across the street from the square. Never mind that at least one key member of that powerful audience, Vice President Al Gore, now won’t even be staying at the Biltmore, in part because of the potential protests.

While the Los Angeles Police Department’s dire warnings about anarchists running wild through the downtown business district may well be overblown, after the violent disturbances at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last year, law enforcement would be remiss not to prepare for such a possibility.

Don’t get us wrong. Public protest is a sacred right in a democracy, and indeed it has become an expectation at national political conventions. That these fully predictable security/free speech concerns are still unsettled is more vivid evidence that convention planners and City Hall have lurched from one crisis to the next, many of them self-created.

The City Council may come back this week to reconsider Goldberg’s motion to officially designate Pershing Square. The council should revoke the designation. It should also recognize that the horse may well be out of the barn already. Goldberg’s ill-considered motion turned Pershing Square into a symbol, official or not. The Police Department, working with other local, state and federal agencies, now must be fully prepared and keep thinking a step ahead. How unfortunate for Los Angeles that its political leaders did not have the foresight to do the same.

The right of protest and the need to be free to conduct commerce need not necessarily collide. Goldberg’s motion to designate Pershing Square, near the Jewelry District, needlessly put those civic concerns in conflict. The imperative to accommodate peaceful assembly and protest as well as support safety and security should have been--and can still be--worked out.