The vast majority of protests over the last month since the Michael Brown and Eric Garner grand jury decisions have been peaceful, organized, righteous, and law-abiding. With a very few exceptions, there have been few actual "agitators" (to use a word preferred by NYPD officials), just lots of justified outrage. However, not every protest is made equally: one such impromptu gathering on the Lower East Side on New Year's descended into an ugly scene, as you can see in the video below.
AnimalNY reporter Aymann Ismail captured the footage above, taken at Ludlow Street just after midnight when a dance party got underway in the middle of the street (thanks to a bicycle rigged with a mobile sound system). People threw trash bags into the street; they chanted "fuck the pigs;" they harassed Ismail for taking video of the scene; and several people were arrested after confrontations with cops trying to open the street up.
All of which is to say: maybe we should leave the actual protesting to sober people. Like the anti-police brutality marchers who were able to peacefully protest earlier that evening without drunkenly singing, "All I want for Christmas are two dead pigs, two dead pigs."
