The freedom of Americans to pray and protest that is enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution must never be taken for granted.
Yet there also must be a careful balance to ensure that those who choose to visit churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and other houses or worship are not subjected to angry mobs of protesters at their doorstep.
This scene was realized last fall when pro-Palestine demonstrators converged just outside the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and railed against a West Bank real estate seminar going on inside. It brought a group of counterprotesters who shouted back at the original demonstrators.
Things got ugly quickly. The pro-Palestine demonstrators chanted anti-Israel slogans such as “Globalize the intifada,” “Death to the IDF” and “Resistance … take another settler out.” The counterprotesters, outraged over the antisemitic slogans, responded by calling them “p*ssies” and “cowards.”
It is often said that “hate has no place” in New York City, yet that scene — along with a similar demonstration in Queens this past January, when anti-Israel demonstrators brazenly shouted support for terrorist group Hamas — demonstrated that such vileness is all too commonplace.
For these reasons, and others, City Council Speaker Julie Menin, just days after taking office in January, introduced a package of legislation aimed at combating hate. One bill would direct the NYPD to “develop and publish a response plan for when there are credible concerns of injury, intimidation, or restriction of movement that prevent access” to houses of worship and schools.
This would codify into law an executive order that former Mayor Eric Adams signed last December, but which Mayor Zohran Mamdani nullified along with a number of other Adams orders last month.
It would ensure that the NYPD establishes protocols at protests near houses of worship to keep them a distance from the entrances, while enabling the department to implement crowd control and other measures to maintain the peace.
Menin’s original bill was amended to address concerns that Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and department brass raised about establishing fixed sets of parameters to protests. The NYPD now believes the amended bill resolves those concerns, and should move forward, as Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber testified before the Council Wednesday.
With those concerns now addressed, Mayor Mamdani expressed willingness on Wednesday to consider the final version of the bill.
The Council must move forward now to adopt the legislation and send it to Mamdani, who should sign it into law without hesitation. And we would recommend he do so with the same flourish that he has in signing other laws and executive orders publicly at press conferences around the city.
It is important that all of us see the mayor sign that bill into law so that a clear message is sent: New York respects the freedoms of worship and protest, and hate truly has no place here.
