December 16, 2005
Get-into-meeting-free union cards?
More reports trickling in from Monday night's New York Yankees stadium hearing:
- At least three people who were stuck outside the hearing tell me they heard guards ask for "elected officials or union members" to come to the front so they could be let in - even while members of the general public were being told the room was at full capacity under the fire code. Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion's press secretary, Anne Fenton, insists this is untrue: "No one was instructed to let any specific person or group of people into the meeting, nor were they instructed to prohibit entrance to any individuals."
- Another audience member recounts that, as she tried to pass information to those stuck outside, Benny Catala, Carrion's director of constituent services, told her that if she didn't go back inside he'd have her arrested. Asked what law allowed him to do this, he snapped: "Benny's law."
- As for Randy Levine's allegation that opponents of the stadium plan are all "professional protestors," Save Our Parks organizer Joyce Hagi, who lives a few blocks from the stadium on the Grand Concourse, replies: "We will submit, at any time, to a residence check if he'd like. As for professional protesters, he should know since they brought so many of them Monday evening."
Posted by Neil deMause
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