In Unpredictable New York Protests, Organized Criticism of Police
By MARC SANTORA and AL BAKER
New York Times
DEC. 5, 2014
The passion of the protesters is personal. In what happened to Eric Garner, a black man who died after a confrontation with the police, they see all that is wrong with a justice system they and many others consider deeply unfair.
When they chant “I can’t breathe,” they are not just repeating Mr. Garner’s dying words, but giving voice to a sense of powerlessness.
Unlike other mass protests in recent years that were aimed at targets such as Wall Street and the World Bank, the focus this time is on the people standing on the other side of the barricades.
That these demonstrations are occurring during the administration of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, and at the end of the tenure of Eric H. Holder Jr., the nation’s first black attorney general, adds to the sense that this moment is both fraught and urgent.
Interviews with dozens of protesters, activists, lawyers and law enforcement officials in New York City over the last several days offer insight into just how organized the protests are in one way — and how unpredictable they are as they unfold.
In the city on Friday, hundreds of protesters roamed Manhattan for the third straight night — this time in the rain. They stopped at the Apple store on Fifth Avenue, Macy’s in Herald Square, Grand Central Terminal and the Christmas tree in Bryant Park. They staged “die-ins” and returned to the “I can’t breathe” refrain.
The protesters actions pose a test for a mayor who not long ago was on their side of the divide, shouting at the powers that be.
Bill de Blasio is now the one in power. The mayor is contending with the aftermath of a grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who applied the chokehold that helped kill Mr. Garner.
And with each passing night, as demonstrators try to close major roadways, bridges and tunnels, and disrupt the rhythms of the city, the risk that the authorities will lose control lingers.
After the initial conflagrations erupted in Ferguson, Mo., when a grand jury there did not indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, most of the demonstrations across the country have been peaceful. But the longer they last, the odds of something going wrong increase — in part because of the nature of the protests themselves.
While civil rights leaders were at the forefront of the early demonstrations, the more recent marches, “die-ins” and rallies are drawing an increasingly wide assortment of people.
There are 60-year-old union workers and 20-year-old college students. There are groups organized through social media with names like Million Hoodies and Black Lives Matter that swell with each high-profile death of a black man at the hands of the police. There are career protesters who have been on hand for major rallies ever since Occupy Wall Street. There are those who want to be part of what they see as a historic moment and those who want to use the occasion just to cause trouble.
In New York, the demonstrations have taken on a familiar feel and are similar to those happening in other major cities. They generally start at a central location, mainly in Manhattan, as the workday ends.
Protesters eschew preplanned routes, calling them “cattle drives.” After some chanting and on-the-spot planning, they move into the streets, seeking to block traffic, disrupt commerce and cause peaceful disturbances. Some demonstrators confront the police up close, trying to provoke them.
Nyle Fort, 25, who has helped organize one band of protesters, said they were continuing a tradition of using the disruption of commerce as a part of peaceful civil disobedience.
Mr. Fort said that he had spent two weeks in Ferguson and that what was going on in New York was clearly different from what happened there.
“The way we have to protest has to be very creative and very well planned out,” he said. At the same time, he said, the protests are not planned at all. Once the central locations are chosen, he said, “a lot of it happens organically.”
“And,” he added, “a lot happens with engagement with the police.”
Some of the protesters are aware of the tactics employed by the Police Department when the Republican National Convention was held in the city in 2004 and hundreds of people were swept up in mass arrests if they congregated in one spot for too long.
To avoid that fate, these protesters keep moving. If the police keep them away from the Brooklyn Bridge, a contingent heads toward Times Square. If Times Square is cleared, they head to the Lincoln Tunnel.
The strategy, one protester said, has been borrowed from Genghis Khan, who forced his enemies to chase him across the plains.
Chief James P. O’Neill, the Police Department’s chief of department, said the police had tried to accommodate the protesters.
“Is there a line?” he said. “I know that the line would be if it was no longer civil disobedience; if it became violent. Of course, we’d have to address that. Our job is to keep everyone safe, not just the protesters.
“There is a balance that we have to strike here between the rights of the protesters and the rights of the other eight and a half million people in New York City, and we’re doing our best keep that balance.”
Chief O’Neill said officers had the demonstrators’ safety in mind at all times. “We want to minimize the chances of people getting hurt,” he said. “We have to keep that in mind as we go through.”
He noted that the marches were shifting more quickly than messages shared on the Internet.
“It’s very, very quick,” he said. “Very fluid. I’m not even sure if the social media stays up with them; the decision to ‘make a right,’ or ‘make a left,’ or ‘go straight.’ It happens pretty fast.”
Chief O’Neill said the protesters had not prevented ambulances or other official vehicles from responding to emergencies during the first two nights of demonstrations. No sick person, or civilian with a health emergency has been unable to get help, he said.
Roughly 100 people were arrested on Wednesday; more than 200 were arrested on Thursday. Most were charged with civil disobedience, the police said.
Gideon Orion Oliver, a lawyer who is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and has served as an official observer for the group at protests in New York for more than a decade, said it was too early to judge how the police and the mayor were handling the current wave of protests.
Mr. Oliver said he was worried by reports he had heard on Thursday about “some instances of police being heavy-handed.”
He said these protests were different than others he had observed because those involved had been more successful at doing things like occupying bridges and tunnels. But, he added, unique forces were at work in this instance.
The specific motivation for these protests, he said, is a belief that the police are overly aggressive. That, he said, meant it would be easy for aggressive action by police to backfire and inspire even more anger among the demonstrators.
Reporting was contributed by Edna Ishayik, Daniel Krieger, Colin Moynihan, Kate Pastor, Nate Schweber and Alex Vadukul.
By MARC SANTORA and AL BAKER
New York Times
DEC. 5, 2014
The passion of the protesters is personal. In what happened to Eric Garner, a black man who died after a confrontation with the police, they see all that is wrong with a justice system they and many others consider deeply unfair.
When they chant “I can’t breathe,” they are not just repeating Mr. Garner’s dying words, but giving voice to a sense of powerlessness.
Unlike other mass protests in recent years that were aimed at targets such as Wall Street and the World Bank, the focus this time is on the people standing on the other side of the barricades.
That these demonstrations are occurring during the administration of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, and at the end of the tenure of Eric H. Holder Jr., the nation’s first black attorney general, adds to the sense that this moment is both fraught and urgent.
Interviews with dozens of protesters, activists, lawyers and law enforcement officials in New York City over the last several days offer insight into just how organized the protests are in one way — and how unpredictable they are as they unfold.
In the city on Friday, hundreds of protesters roamed Manhattan for the third straight night — this time in the rain. They stopped at the Apple store on Fifth Avenue, Macy’s in Herald Square, Grand Central Terminal and the Christmas tree in Bryant Park. They staged “die-ins” and returned to the “I can’t breathe” refrain.
The protesters actions pose a test for a mayor who not long ago was on their side of the divide, shouting at the powers that be.
Bill de Blasio is now the one in power. The mayor is contending with the aftermath of a grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who applied the chokehold that helped kill Mr. Garner.
And with each passing night, as demonstrators try to close major roadways, bridges and tunnels, and disrupt the rhythms of the city, the risk that the authorities will lose control lingers.
After the initial conflagrations erupted in Ferguson, Mo., when a grand jury there did not indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, most of the demonstrations across the country have been peaceful. But the longer they last, the odds of something going wrong increase — in part because of the nature of the protests themselves.
While civil rights leaders were at the forefront of the early demonstrations, the more recent marches, “die-ins” and rallies are drawing an increasingly wide assortment of people.
There are 60-year-old union workers and 20-year-old college students. There are groups organized through social media with names like Million Hoodies and Black Lives Matter that swell with each high-profile death of a black man at the hands of the police. There are career protesters who have been on hand for major rallies ever since Occupy Wall Street. There are those who want to be part of what they see as a historic moment and those who want to use the occasion just to cause trouble.
In New York, the demonstrations have taken on a familiar feel and are similar to those happening in other major cities. They generally start at a central location, mainly in Manhattan, as the workday ends.
Protesters eschew preplanned routes, calling them “cattle drives.” After some chanting and on-the-spot planning, they move into the streets, seeking to block traffic, disrupt commerce and cause peaceful disturbances. Some demonstrators confront the police up close, trying to provoke them.
Nyle Fort, 25, who has helped organize one band of protesters, said they were continuing a tradition of using the disruption of commerce as a part of peaceful civil disobedience.
Mr. Fort said that he had spent two weeks in Ferguson and that what was going on in New York was clearly different from what happened there.
“The way we have to protest has to be very creative and very well planned out,” he said. At the same time, he said, the protests are not planned at all. Once the central locations are chosen, he said, “a lot of it happens organically.”
“And,” he added, “a lot happens with engagement with the police.”
Some of the protesters are aware of the tactics employed by the Police Department when the Republican National Convention was held in the city in 2004 and hundreds of people were swept up in mass arrests if they congregated in one spot for too long.
To avoid that fate, these protesters keep moving. If the police keep them away from the Brooklyn Bridge, a contingent heads toward Times Square. If Times Square is cleared, they head to the Lincoln Tunnel.
The strategy, one protester said, has been borrowed from Genghis Khan, who forced his enemies to chase him across the plains.
Chief James P. O’Neill, the Police Department’s chief of department, said the police had tried to accommodate the protesters.
“Is there a line?” he said. “I know that the line would be if it was no longer civil disobedience; if it became violent. Of course, we’d have to address that. Our job is to keep everyone safe, not just the protesters.
“There is a balance that we have to strike here between the rights of the protesters and the rights of the other eight and a half million people in New York City, and we’re doing our best keep that balance.”
Chief O’Neill said officers had the demonstrators’ safety in mind at all times. “We want to minimize the chances of people getting hurt,” he said. “We have to keep that in mind as we go through.”
He noted that the marches were shifting more quickly than messages shared on the Internet.
“It’s very, very quick,” he said. “Very fluid. I’m not even sure if the social media stays up with them; the decision to ‘make a right,’ or ‘make a left,’ or ‘go straight.’ It happens pretty fast.”
Chief O’Neill said the protesters had not prevented ambulances or other official vehicles from responding to emergencies during the first two nights of demonstrations. No sick person, or civilian with a health emergency has been unable to get help, he said.
Roughly 100 people were arrested on Wednesday; more than 200 were arrested on Thursday. Most were charged with civil disobedience, the police said.
Gideon Orion Oliver, a lawyer who is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and has served as an official observer for the group at protests in New York for more than a decade, said it was too early to judge how the police and the mayor were handling the current wave of protests.
Mr. Oliver said he was worried by reports he had heard on Thursday about “some instances of police being heavy-handed.”
He said these protests were different than others he had observed because those involved had been more successful at doing things like occupying bridges and tunnels. But, he added, unique forces were at work in this instance.
The specific motivation for these protests, he said, is a belief that the police are overly aggressive. That, he said, meant it would be easy for aggressive action by police to backfire and inspire even more anger among the demonstrators.
Reporting was contributed by Edna Ishayik, Daniel Krieger, Colin Moynihan, Kate Pastor, Nate Schweber and Alex Vadukul.
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