Mayor Street is about to arrive and people are flocking to see him open the gates that have, for 19 months, blocked off Chestnut Street between Sixth and Fifth, a lame stab at security that killed local business and sent the absolutely wrong message about the birthplace of our nation.

So I ask Ann Meredith -- president of the Lights of Liberty Show and an organizer for the Coalition to Free Chestnut Street -- if we can move the tent and three guys come and start to grab its poles. Then one of them points to me and shoots me a you-asked-for-it, you-move-it look. I grab the fourth leg and we move the tent a dozen or so paces closer to Market. A shooter from the Daily News jokes that I better watch out or the union guys will get upset. Good thing this isn't the Convention Center. Otherwise this simple task would have taken a week.

Edward Becker, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and spokesman for this coalition of the able, is the first to speak.

"We are here to celebrate the reopening of Chestnut Street," says Judge Becker, "and the liberation of Independence Hall."

Stirred by the memory of Ben Franklin, Judge Becker points out the folly of trying to protect America's most important building by cutting off traffic and throwing up fences.

"It is instructive to begin these proceedings by recalling what Dr. Franklin said on Nov. 11, 1755, when, as a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, he made the following reply to the governor: ŒThose who would give up essential liberties to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.' Those of us here today know from the painful experience of the last 19 months, that the closure of Chestnut Street has not given us additional security or safety, while at the same time it tarnished Independence Hall as the symbol of liberty and freedom."

Becker then adds how wonderful it is to look out at this place where Franklin and his cohorts put so much on the line to write the Declaration of Independence, and later, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Interesting stuff coming from a guy who last year helped trash those documents when he ruled to maintain the Bush administration's blackout on any information pertaining to federal deportation hearings. Becker, as CNN pointed out, felt that "terrorism is simply too, well, terrifying to allow these proceedings to be open."

Fortunately, 248 years after Franklin spoke up to his governor, Street does the same.

Last Friday night, with the president coming to town, homeland security director and former Gov. Tom Ridge told Street he would like to see a delay in Tuesday's opening ceremonies. Safety concerns and all that rot.

Street -- a late convert to the Coalition who hemmed and hawed for 17 months before making the right call during his re-election bid -- delivered a Franklinian message to Ridge.

This building is too important to Philadelphia -- and the nation -- to keep it locked down. Chestnut Street will be reopened.

Ridge "was very clear with me," says the Mayor. "As late as yesterday, he said to me that this was an executive decision, not an administrative decision. This was a decision of the mayor."

It is a marvelous decision. And the perfect antidote to the visit 25 hours earlier of the one-term president who came to Philadelphia -- the key city in a key state in next year's presidential election -- desperately seeking votes.

Strolling out to cheers from the Coast Guardsmen whom he came to address, Bush looked very presidential, but said little, really, other than Saddam is bad, our troops are fighting very hard to "liberate" Iraq and victory -- bloody as it may be -- is assured.

Bush didn't talk about what happens next, or which Iraqis will run a country being pulverized into the Balkans of the Middle East. He didn't talk about how to repair our fractured international relations.

Nor, for that matter, did he say anything about the Park Service's plan to shut down Independence Hall for a week to install metal detectors and other security enhancements.

For a few moments on an overcast Tuesday afternoon, none of that matters as Street moves the gate and opens Chestnut to traffic and a happy flock follows him east toward the river, everyone stepping lively past Independence Hall to the beat of a colonial fife and drum corps.