Post 81 - May 31, 2020
Day 81…
There’s a siren outside, this morning, but no sound of helicopters. Yet.
Yesterday, there was a march organized in Harlem which is just north of us, so we started the day with sirens on the street and helicopters in the air.
In the afternoon, I biked in the opposite direction, going downtown through Central Park. The trees in the park are in full leaf now, the spring flowers largely gone. The park is a dense thick cloud of green floating in the middle of the city. As I rode downtown, I could, nonetheless, hear the sound of a protest on Central Park West. The group came into the park, near the Museum of Natural History, so I stopped for a while and took some pictures.
Somebody in the group pointed at me as they walked past and said, “Take all the pictures you want, but if you ain’t marching, you better donate some bail money for people who are.”
I continued downtown, riding with the group for a while and adding my voice to the chanting. The protest was strong, but not in any way out of control. It was organized, angry and focused.
Ultimately, I left the group and made my way down to the south end of the park where I ditched the bike and walked.
Every week, since the pandemic has shut us down, I’ve made a pilgrimage into Times Square to see what is happening there. Yesterday, much of Broadway in midtown was closed to vehicular traffic as part of a city program to give people a place to walk that allows them to spread out. Because of that, Times Square was extremely quiet. Very few pedestrians were out, and the whole area had the same desolate feel that it had had in the early weeks of the shut-down.
Eighty-one days into this pandemic, it feels very different walking around the non-residential parts of the city. Places have been shut for so long that it’s becoming hard to associate them with places of business anymore. They don’t look real - more like a Hollywood backlot of facades.Homeless people have set up living spaces in front of closed buildings that are starting to look permanent.
I wandered out of Times Square and walked down 45th Street to look at the theatres. Some still have their LED marquees running but a couple have changed theirs to an image that says, “Only Intermission.”
I walked through Shubert Alley to 44th Street. The deli is closed. As is Sardis. And of course, the theatres.
I walked back into Times Square and was starting to head uptown when I noticed that in the few minutes that I had been on 45th Street, groups of police officers, some in riot gear, were now standing on several corners. Facing downtown. They were completely on alert.
My stomach flipped.
In the distance, I could now see the front edge of a tide of people walking north. A bus, two blocks down, had stopped in the middle of making a turn, unable to proceed. It was a tsunami of people.
White. Black. Hispanic. Asian. They flowed into Times Square and filled it in a remarkably short time. I would guess that there were at least five or six thousand people in the group. This group was truly angry. The level of anger was very much escalated from that of the protest Michael and I had been a part of the day before.
The police stood their ground on the street corners and did not react to the protestors. The protesters screamed at them as they passed.
I followed the crowd to the north edge of the square.
In the center of Times Square is a large red staircase, underneath which is the TKTS booth that sells ½ price tickets to Broadway shows on the day of. A large part of the crowd ended up on 47th Street, between the north end of the staircase and an Olive Garden. The protestors were largely situated to the west on 47th and a large group of 50-60 police officers had come together to the east. I stayed downtown to the south of both groups in a looser mass of people who were watching.
With everybody in this tight area, tension grew. The volume raised. The protestors started throwing plastic water bottles at the police.
A police whistle blew.
In an instant, the entire mass of police surged as one towards the protestors. There were screams and we all immediately fled.
Police officers in full riot gear were coming directly at me along with the rest of the crowd. I turned and ran south as fast as I could.
After a minute, it was apparent that that the police had stopped chasing us. The great majority of the force had gone west rather than south.
People were arrested. Those who had been detained were yelling out their names and phone numbers to those that were still free who, in turn, were writing them down.
I made my way through all of this so I could get uptown of all of it and out of the way. As I did, I saw that the protest group I had seen earlier in Central Park were now arriving from the north, so I just left and headed north back home. Truly shaken.
I’ve experienced many protests before but never anything like that.
Last night, protests like this erupted in countless cities around the country. Some were peaceful but many became violent - far more violent than the short moment I witnessed - with looting and arson. Tear gas and rubber bullets.
CNN is reporting that there was violence reported in at least three dozen different communities around the US last night. 300 people were arrested in New York City alone.
There are actually multiple reports, in several cities, of policemen, themselves, breaking windows and setting fires to trigger the violence. There is video of this happening.
Last night here in Chelsea, small group of people on scooters ignited trashcans ahead of the wave of protesters. Journalists and cameramen were shot at in several cities with rubber bullets even after identifying themselves. There are reports of white supremacist groups inciting the violence in the hopes of starting a race war.
There are plenty of protesters who are not engaging in violence. We are just not being shown them. There were large groups of peaceful protesters who tried to counter the violence.
What started this current wave of protest, was the tragic death of a black man at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis - just the latest in a seemingly endless stream of similar wrongful deaths. What it’s becoming is something else. Many different groups of people with completely conflicting agendas seem to be trying to manipulate our very real anguish towards their own ends.
We need to keep our eyes on the prize.
The press, by just covering the violence and the looting, and not the peaceful protest component, are just inciting more of the same. The burning buildings and cars make for very dramatic images, but they obscure what this protest is fundamentally about.
What it’s about is the rotting systemic racism that has eaten away at the heart of our country for centuries.
Our President is as responsible for all of this violence as he is for the death rate of our people from COVID-19. He has encouraged all of this violence by tweeting support for the armed protestors storming the Michigan capital demanding the lock-down be lifted and condemning the George Floyd protesters as being thugs. He is doing nothing whatsoever to try and re-establish peace. No address to the nation. Nothing.
He is sitting in the White House watching the country burn and, all the while, adding fuel to the fires.
So. What do we do?
We cannot be silent. We must speak up.
After my experience in Times Square yesterday, I think I’m going to stay in today. Since I began writing this, I can hear that the helicopters have come back. There have been more sirens and a constant stream of idiot motorcyclists racing loudly through the streets. This isn’t over.
After what that person in Central Park said to me, I’ve done a little research. Here are some organizations that are helping:
The Minnesota Freedom Fund
The Brooklyn Bail Fund
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Communities United Against Police Brutality
Black Visions Collective
Northstar Health Collective
And the ACLU.
If you go out and march today, please, please be safe and remember what you are marching for. Also, please remember that we are still in the middle of a global pandemic. Wear a mask and keep some distance.
If you stay home today, which is the far safer option, don’t shut out what’s going on. Google some of the organizations I mentioned above and consider giving them some support.
Black Lives matter. That’s what we are marching for. That’s what we need to learn.
Black lives MATTER.