I am standing in the lush green silence of Central Park's Great Lawn yesterday afternoon - as close to the heart of this great city as anyone can get.

Scattered on the lawn's immaculate grass are scores of sunbathers, a couple of youngsters lazily tossing a softball, several groups of shirtless young men chasing Frisbees and the usual assortment of tourists with their cameras in tow.

This vast patch of green has always been our city's town square, the one spot where throngs of New Yorkers can periodically gather and send a message to the rest of the nation.

That message was not always welcomed. But whether it came through musical concerts, religious events or angry protest rallies, few could ignore it.

Not when the great Pavarotti sang before 250,000 people in 1993. Not when 130,000 turned out for Pope John Paul's open-air Mass in 1995. Not when another quarter-million showed up for a Garth Brooks concert in the park's North Meadow in 1997, nor when when 120,000 came out last fall to hear Dave Matthews.

Now along comes Mayor Bloomberg, claiming he can pick and choose which New Yorkers get to use the Great Lawn for a public event.

If you're the Metropolitan Opera or the Philharmonic, Bloomberg says, you and your fans are okay. But if you are called United for Peace and Justice, and want to assemble more than 200,000 people in the park to protest the Iraq war on Aug. 29, the eve of the Republican Convention, the Great Lawn is off-limits.

Such a huge crowd will damage the grass, Bloomberg says. Forget protesting the carnage of war and an occupation now opposed by most Americans. Save those blades of grass, Mr. Mayor.

Such nonsense did not begin with Bloomberg. Political rallies in Central Park have always unnerved our city leaders.

The first protest march I ever attended was on the Great Lawn. The year was 1967 and I was still in college. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a huge march to Central Park against the Vietnam War. City leaders were furious at King for straying from civil rights and meddling with the war.

One of the biggest demonstrations in the city's history occurred on June 13, 1982, when more than 750,000 people amassed in Central Park against nuclear weapons.

Back then, City Hall tried for weeks to force march organizers to gather near the United Nations. But as the date of the rally grew closer, it became obvious no place in Manhattan could safely hold a crowd that large.

No place except Central Park.

The Police Department overruled Parks Department officials at the last moment, and the marchers were allowed to assemble on the Great Lawn.

That event turned out so peacefully that city officials quickly changed their tune.

"There is more litter in my son's room than in Central Park," then-Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis said the day after the march.

"They treated this park as gently as a newborn baby."

This time, Bloomberg's aides have offered United for Peace and Justice only an isolated rallying spot on Chambers and West Sts., near Ground Zero. March organizers insist Central Park is the best option, but they've offered several different alternatives and say they've gotten little response.

Bloomberg needs to wake up and realize that if only a fraction of those Americans who are fed up with the Republicans and this Iraq mess show up on Aug. 29, he'll need the Great Lawn, the North Meadow and all of Central Park to hold them.

© 2004 Daily News, L.P.

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