Pot's OK, veterans aren't: NYPD nixes vets' parade permit after allowing pot smokers to march
A parade held by veterans on Staten Island for over a century is in jeopardy due to de Blasio's CCP virus restrictions on public gatherings.
Toting an inflatable joint while toking on the real things, NYC marijuana smokers paraded May 1 down Broadway. Veterans have been denied a permit to hold a parade honoring Gulf War vets on Memorial Day this year. (Photo: Eric Pendzich/New York Post)
In New York City, apparently, it’s OK to have a massive celebration of marijuana, but not one for veterans.
Bill de Blasio is refusing to allow a group of military veterans to march on Staten Island this coming Memorial Day. Yet on May 1 — not coincidentally, the Fascist-Marxist day to celebrate the “workers of the world” — the city allowed public marijuana smokers to puff their way down Broadway in a “Cannabis Parade.”
“It’s a slap in the face,” Jamie Gonzalez, 57, a Marine infantryman who saw combat in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm..
Gulf War vets like Gonzalez were set to be given special honors in the United Veterans of Staten Island’s 102nd annual Memorial Day Parade this year to mark the 30th anniversary of the conflict that liberated Kuwait from invading Iraqi forces under Saddam Huissein. But the New York Police Department (NYPD) pulled the plug, citing CCP virus restrictions.
“For many of us, a parade is a form of closure,” Gonzalez said. “We gather together and support each other.”
“I’m incensed,” said Ted Cohen, 82, a retired Air Force reservist who was on alert through the Cuban Missile Crisis. “It’s pathetic.”
The United Veterans of Staten Island filed a request for a parade permit on February 27 with NYPD. The group is an affiliation of 16 local vets’ groups that has sponsored the annual march since Memorial Day 1919, the first following the end of World War I. The groups followed the same procedures they’ve used every year as outlined by city ordinance in legally holding such parades and other events.
On March 9, the department nixed the request, citing de Blasio’s emergency executive order restricting public events due to the CCP virus pandemic. City Hall did not respond to an email or a voicemail from America’s Conservative Voice (ACV) seeking comment.
The brush-off came despite myriad marches in the last year that have been recognized by the city, officially escorted by cops, and often featuring elected officials in the line of march. Those events included a slimmed-down St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March this year when de Blasio himself participated.
Additionally there have been countless unsanctioned Black Lives Matter and Antifa demonstrations — many of which devolved into riots, looting and carnage — as well as the cannabis rally and parade May 1, when revelers hoisted a huge inflatable spliff along a 17-block route and heard speeches from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who praised New York state’s new medical marijuana laws.
One city official said that the vets have become caught in the bureaucratic no-man’s-land of de Blasio’s haphazard coronavirus rules.
“People are just marching. That’s the new normal,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller said. “The Staten Island people had the decorum and respect to go the proper way [and] they are suffering for their civic-mindedness. No one else is even asking permission.”
NYPD cited Mayor Bill de Blasio’s CCP virus restrictions in denying a Staten Island veterans’ group a parade permit to march on Memorial Day. A police department spokesman said the denial came despite numerous other groups being allow to publicly gather, regardless of having a permit. (Photo: Dana Shearer/New York Daily News)
“We have accommodated a whole lot of marches, protests and different gatherings even without permits,” Miller added. “Any group that makes a conscious effort to do the right thing should be, in my mind, accommodated.”
The Island vets, whose predicament was first reported in the Staten Island Advance, are enraged by the unequal treatment.
“Look, have any parade you want, I have no problem with that,” said Volker Heyde, 78, the commandant of Staten Island’s Marine Corps League. “But for the city to put dopeheads over vets is just dishonoring us.”
Attorney Brendan Lantry sent a “good faith” letter to the NYPD Friday to demand a parade permit by noon Monday, citing the Cannabis Parade as precedent.
“Under the equal protection clause, it’s unconstitutional for the city to pick and choose between groups like this,” Lantry said. “There’s a clear double standard going on here.”
The group will file a lawsuit if necessary, perhaps as soon as Tuesday this week, Landry said. A legal permit is also important for insurance reasons, as many elderly vets are participating and could need coverage against injury.
The veterans’ permit application estimated that 1,000 participants would march down Forest Avenue from Hart Boulevard to Greenleaf Avenue, an 18-block, two-mile stretch of the leafy commercial street in West Brighton.
About 200 potheads partied at the New York City Cannabis Parade, which culminated in a Union Square rally where politicians like Schumer praised the state’s new legal-weed law. But the pot-rally organizers appear to have found a back door to get their event approved.
“We got a permit from the Parks Department,” rally spokesman Stu Zakim said. “We had a police escort the whole way, they shut traffic down, all that stuff.”
Lantry called the stealth permit process “insane.”
“There’s a reason this goes through NYPD — for security for those in the parade and those on the sidelines,” he said. “Parks should have no role in this parade.”
Landry added that the veterans’ group, which he is representing pro bono, will not seek the shortcut the pot smokers used. He cited the legal procedure in New York City requiring such applications be made to NYPD.
There appears to be no valid reason for denying the permit, other than New York is now a hostile society and culture to conservatives, populists and any group that might primarily represent those views among their membership. When pot takes precedence over veterans, the swing toward Fascism in the U.S.s gone way too far.