Thousands of New Yorkers marched late into the evening across Brooklyn and Manhattan, demanding justice for Breonna Taylor after Kentucky’s Attorney General announced the police who killed her would not face any charges directly related to her death. Nearly four months into an outpouring of demonstrations against racist police brutality this summer, the turnout for Taylor was substantial.
“I’ve been crying all day,” said a 30-year-old Brooklyn woman, who declined to be named. “I’m exhausted. I’m tired. I just feel really unsafe everywhere. Being alive is revolutionary because I’m Black.”
One march began at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, another started at 59th and 5th Avenue in Midtown. At various points, protesters shut down the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges to traffic, and the two groups later converged in the East Village.
“It was really a kick in the heart,” 27-year-old protester J.J. Jones said of the Kentucky grand jury’s decision to charge only one of the officers who killed Taylor with the lesser crime of “wanton endangerment.”
“Not shocking, to be honest. I think it was just a feeling of despair,” he added.
Jones said he felt that the inability of law enforcement to punish officers for wrongdoing boiled down to “the issue of policing the community and not being a part of the community.”
“When we saw the NYPD endorse Donald Trump, again not a shock at all, we sort of expected that to happen,” he said.
While the NYPD was out in force, following the marches in scooters, vans, and at least three helicopters, they allowed marchers to take the roadway and block traffic for brief periods of time. As recently as last weekend they took a different approach, and arrested 86 people for peacefully protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
At 59th and 5th, there was a brief standoff after two NYPD white shirts ran into a large crowd, looking for someone to arrest. They both ended up on the ground, and stood up, bewildered, as uniformed officers began to surround them and the crowd jeered and yelled.
“Did we get him? Where’d he go?” one of the NYPD commanders said. Eventually, they backed off and the march resumed.
An NYPD spokesperson said there were no arrests related to Wednesday night's protests.
At times, some demonstrators seemed somewhat conflicted on what kind of tactics to engage in. At the outset of the Manhattan march, one organizer urged the crowd, “do not engage with the police tonight,” and had everyone chant the phrase “we are nonviolent.”
“We are not tolerating any agitators tonight,” they announced.
One of the co-founders of the group Warriors in the Garden, who helped organize Wednesday night’s event with the Black Women’s March, had good reason to be wary. Last month he was tracked down by the NYPD through facial recognition technology, and the department laid siege to his Hell’s Kitchen apartment for the better part of a day, because he allegedly yelled at an NYPD officer through a bullhorn.
Later, after a contingent of black bloc protesters were seen weaving their way through the crowd, knocking over trash cans and writing graffiti on the street, those organizers made good on their threat and asked them to leave.
“Pansies!” one protester dressed in black shouted.
“You’re putting everyone here in danger!” the organizer replied.
At the Barclays Center, demonstrators packed the de facto town square and into the streets, lying down for a full 8 minutes and 46 seconds—representing the amount of time an officer in Minneapolis kneeled on the neck of George Floyd. The massive group took over all three sections of the Manhattan Bridge, weaving in and out of motorists who had been brought to a standstill.
In the East Village, the two groups converged to cheers and continued on through the East Village streets. Diners eating at outdoor restaurants set up due to the pandemic were urged to join the protests, amid chants of “Breonna Taylor—say her name” and “Wake up, wake up this is your fight too.”
On the bike ride back into Brooklyn over the Williamsburg Bridge towards the end of the night, Brooklynite Kevin Herbert said he still felt “upset” at the simple injustice that replays over and over again across the city and the country.
“Sending officers that did what they did to jail is not hard to do. It shouldn't be that you're protecting bad people. That doesn't make sense,” said Herbert, who has channeled his energy into hosting weekly bike rides for racial justice.
“We’ve been marching to say that Black Lives Matter and today couldn’t have made it more clear that in the eyes of the law they don’t,” said Vlad, a 33-year-old upper Manhattanite. “She’s dead. But as far as the state of Kentucky’s concerned and [the Attorney General], there was no murder committed. Today the energy is different. I think it’s angrier.”
“The moment that we go back home, the politicians, whomever, get to wipe their hands and say, oh thank goodness that’s over,” he added. “It won’t [be] over until they change shit.”
