For me, part of the fight against the conventions has been the central question of the privatization of urban spaces and the corporatization and militarization of the "new times square"/herald square area as well as the trauma of september 11. The republican convention's attempt to hijack New York is a totalizing gesture which constructs our city as a sort of pliant tourist destination and historical curiousity and the attacks of september 11th are understood similarly as an opportunity to take advantage of the rich history of a site available for political exploitation. Those of us who actually live here, who work here, who have fought to shape and reshape the social geography of this city, are silenced, confined to pins for delegates to ogle and police to beat and spray or banished to the "nether boroughs" or to neighborhoods tour buses stop in only for a dash of ethnic flavor for their narrative of gentrifying urban potpurri or dare not drive through at all. Bloomberg's winning right now, standing on the shoulders of 8 years of Giuliani and twelve years of zero tolerance policing and racist politics of exclusion. This week, we aren't just demanding an end, we're building a new new york together.