For the second time this month, hundreds of New Yorkers gathered in the streets to protest the increased activity of police in the subways, leading to repeated clashes with the NYPD and 58 arrests.
“We’re protesting police brutality and over-policing in the subways,” said Jonathan Acevedo, 21, of the Bronx, who arrived at Friday night’s protest in Harlem carrying a sign that read “Young, brown and queer, Police are not welcome here.”
“People are being thrown on the floor, wrongfully arrested, homeless people are being thrown out of the subway when it’s freezing cold outside,” Acevedo said. “It’s very wrong.”
A teenager from Brooklyn wearing a keffiyeh over his face and carrying a sign that read “Pigs Are Haram” agreed. “We’re here to protest the criminalization of poverty that the MTA has undertaken to quote-unquote ‘stop fare evasion,’ which is just a war on poor black and brown people to clear the way for gentrification,” he said, declining to give his name.
The protests are responding to a steady stream of disturbing videos of police behavior in the subways, with officers pulling guns on suspected farebeaters, punching teenagers, arresting candy sellers, and handcuffing women selling churros. At the same time, Governor Andrew Cuomo has promised to send an additional 500 police officers into the subways beginning next year, despite the fact that subway crime is not increasing appreciably, and it isn’t clear that the capacity even exists to train them.
To the dismay of some critics, protesters at last night’s action and the one that preceded it do not believe that the situation calls for temperance and civility. Organizers didn’t seek a protest permit from the police. Marchers invariably took to the roadways, snarling traffic. And participants chanted every conceivable variation of “Fuck the police.”
Actions like these are necessary because they put pressure on government officials to reconsider the cost of their policies, said Shannon Jones of the Bronx-based group Why Accountability, one of the organizers. “In order for the authorities to pay attention, there has to be disruption.”
The “emergency action,” organized by the same coalition of activists that convened the one in Brooklyn November 2, began underneath a statue of Harriet Tubman on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, but as the crowd swelled into the hundreds, it relocated to Adam Clayton Powell Plaza on 125th Street. There, organizers warned participants that because the action hadn’t sought a permit from the New York Police Department, participants could be arrested.
The crowd was young, radical, and racially diverse, and organizers were careful to center black and brown participants as the people most directly affected by over-policing, directing white people to step to the back of the march. “Police brutality is a very serious matter to black and brown people,” Jones told the crowd. “We are not here to play. If you came here to play, we respectfully ask that you take your ass home.” A small knot of people from the Revolutionary Communist Party objected to this suggestion, provoking a brief standoff. Above it all, a Peppa Pig balloon, tied to a lamppost and inscribed with the words “Fuck the Police,” tossed in the wind.
The march soon set off eastward on 125th Street, attempting to take the roadway. Police used a Long-Range Acoustic Device to warn them they would be arrested if they didn’t get out of the street, and police on bicycles soon forced them back onto the sidewalk, arresting at least one person. There were more arrests as the group turned north on Malcolm X Boulevard, where entrances to the 2 and 3 Subway stop were barricaded and guarded by police. Continuing north and east in the roadway and flanked by police on bicycles, the protesters chanted “Brick by brick! Wall by wall! We will make your jails fall!” One person carried a sign that read “More churros, less cops, NYPD out of MTA.”
The marchers were greeted with signs of support along their route. Drivers stuck in traffic honked their horns and waved agreement. Children inside St. Luke’s Baptist Church on Park Avenue pumped their fists with the protesters. Residents of the Lincoln Projects on 5th Avenue opened their windows and called out encouragement.
At 135th Street and Fifth Avenue, police managed to split the group as it attempted to get onto Harlem River Drive. Police used their bicycles as battering rams to plow into the crowd, knocking people over and arresting them. One group remained in Harlem, another crossed over the Madison Avenue Bridge into the Bronx, chanting “Fire! Fire! Fire to the gentrifiers!” and “Eat the rich!”
At 3rd Avenue and 149th Street in the Bronx, protesters ducked into the 2 and 5 subway station and managed to partially dismember a turnstile, before proceeding on to the Horizon Juvenile Center, the facility where New York incarcerates its youngest, which has been dogged by allegations of chronic sexual abuse. “Always cherish young people,” Jones told the crowd. “We love our young people.”
The dismembered turnstile.
By 8:30 p.m., the march had concluded, but organizers urged participants to carry on to police headquarters in Lower Manhattan to support the many people who were arrested over the course of the action. They promised to return to the streets with a third protest soon.
The NYPD confirmed that 58 people were arrested in the protest, but a spokesperson was not able to report the nature of their charges. The majority of the arrests resulted in criminal court summonses, according to the NYPD. Most of those arrested have already been released. More are being arraigned today.
Outside the Sosua Food Center grocery on 3rd Avenue in the Bronx, a group of men from the Patterson housing project nodded approvingly as the protesters marched past. “I like this,” said a man who identified himself as Money Mel. “I feel good about what they’re doing here. Not all police around here are bad, but a lot of them are.”
