NEW YORK, May 21 - Over several hours yesterday about one hundred New Yorkers filed into the gymnasium at the Chelsea Recreation Center on West 25th Street to sign their name to a list and get in line for their five minutes of free speech at a public hearing about proposed new Parks Department rules to restrict large gatherings on Central Park's Great Lawn. After an 18.2 million dollar restoration of the Great Lawn, new rules limiting large gatherings there were written in 1997. Supposedly the proposal under discussion now is only a "formalization of these rules," according to what Adrian Benepe, Parks Commissioner, told the New York Times. One by one, names were called by Parks Department officials, who sat behind a long folding table just above the center court line of the basketball court upon which the hearing took place. Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields spoke directly to the Parks Department representatives in a tone of forceful concern, urging the panel to "ban this outrageous proposal." Henry Stern, former Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, eschewed the wait in line. Leslie Cagan, of United for Peace and Justice, protested his jumping the queue, briefly preventing him from speaking, to which Stern replied, "I thought you folks liked free speech." Stern was unequivocal in his presentation, "My opinion is that there shouldn't be any events on the Great Lawn besides cultural events that we've had for 40 years." He told this reporter later that "this was a great victory. The rules will be adopted. Absolutely." I asked him if he thought there was room for compromise and he replied, "No. Not interested in compromise. Either you let them gather on the Great Lawn or you don't." In some cases, it felt like a spoof on a A.A. meeting: "Hello, my name is Lloyd Cray and I am an ordinary citizen," said an African American gentleman, at the podium, under a basketball net, who spoke out against the Parks Department's proposal. Many people approached the podium, coming forward as "ordinary New Yorkers," or like Cagan, as "an individual." Some were a bit more adamant in their statements. Many read from prepared statements, turning directly to the gathered crowd, away from the Parks Department representatives or, in the case of Adam Honigman, a member of Community Board four and a "volunteer master gardener" in the Clinton Community Garden, who read with an intensity and ferociousness for his cause that was unrivaled. Many gathered decried the politicization of the Park. Honigman read, "To have a quarter million trample the grass is tragic. The Great Lawn did not start the war, Bush did. The Great Lawn should not be George Bush's whipping boy." Then there was Rita Denowitz, a Park volunteer for seventeen years who said, "I resent deeply the politicizing of this park." While she reasoned later that "this is a political issue. I am concerned about the nazis who should also have a right to speak." Norman Siegel, attorney and candidate for Public Advocate, told this reporter that at the start of the hearing, outside, that Adam Honigman had heckled him and told him to go to Cuba to fight for "a Peoples' park." Siegel met the man's remark with aplomb and asked him, "Can't we agree to disagree?" Siegel continued a rational argument during his five minutes at the podium. He suggested that the number of large gatherings to be allowed, six, was arbitrary. And that one side of the gymnasium was frightened of what they felt to be the "increasing privatization of the parks." A former Central Park Conservancy member named Blossom recounted to the crowd that she'd done her own research on the durability of different grasses and that she found out that the problem is "really not that complicated" and that "the grass is really not the issue." Photos: Henry Stern, former Commissioner of Parks and Recreation Leslie Cagan, United for Peace and Justice Rita Denowitz and Adam Honigman, gardeners Norman Siegel, Attorney and candidate for Public Advocate http://www.antrimcaskey.com