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Also this issue: Pissing Match Cover the Uninsured |
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March 6-12, 2003
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 Photo By: Michael T. Regan |
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Who cares if it's an election-year ploy? Kudos to Mayor John Street for his decision to re-open the 500 block of Chestnut Street to vehicular and pedestrian traffic come April 1. (Well, we might have chosen a different date, but let us not quibble.)
Nothing has been a more fitting reminder of the assault on our country, and the resulting assault on our civil liberties, than the hideous barricades in front of the Chestnut Street entrance to Independence Hall.
Heading the first group of pedestrians to walk through the barricades since they went up, Street pointed out to a platoon of reporters and members of Free Chestnut Street -- a neighborhood group that came together to oppose the onerous road closing -- that the barricades offer little real protection. Especially when measured against the inconvenience, loss of revenue and mental anguish created by closing off Chestnut Street.
"See that truck," said the mayor, pointing to a moving van rumbling north on Fifth Street. "That could have contained enough explosives to blow up the building. See that car? Same thing. The people came to me to complain and I listened."
And for that we are grateful.
It will be a great day indeed when Independence Hall is once again independent.
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