BY ZACH WILLIAMS | Addressing racism takes time and patience but #BlackLivesMatter activists were eager to do something big on Tues., April 14, in their largest show of force in months.
About 1,000 activists marched from Union Square down Broadway in a renewed push for more police accountability for their treatment of people of color. After reaching the City Hall area, they struggled against efforts by law enforcement to contain the protest, but activists ultimately succeeded in reaching the Brooklyn Bridge where they blocked rush-hour traffic. About three dozen people were arrested there Tuesday night. Police said two officers were injured.
Actions will need to continue on a consistent basis in order catalyze the systematic changes desired by many activists, marchers said. Demands include that charges be brought against New York Police Department officers accused of killing people of color without cause, notably in the case of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who was choked to death by police while they sought to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes. But the purpose of the protests extends beyond addressing the experiences of minority men, activists said.
“This is not just for blacks,” said Michael Armstrong, a Harlem resident who participated in the April 14 march. “This is for everybody ’cause you could be shooting at me and someone else could get hit, so all lives matter. It’s not about color.”
In recent weeks, fatal shootings of unarmed black men have remained in the headlines nationwide, including the April 4 shooting of Walter Scott, 50, in North Charleston, South Carolina, following a traffic stop. A federal probe into Garner’s death remains ongoing, though a grand jury declined to indict an officer in the Staten Island man’s death last year.
Federal officials declined to press civil rights charges earlier this year against Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri, officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, 18, last year. However, the U.S. Department of Justice did issue a scathing report of that city’s police department, which led to the resignation of the local police chief, city manager and a municipal judge.
Though scuffles with police did occur in New York City on April 14 — and two police were reported injured — activists said they were encouraged by the march’s overall peaceful nature. Largely organized by far-left groups, most participants were a bit more mainstream than the Revolutionary Community Party U.S.A., which staged a rally at Union Square. Activist intellectual Cornel West, a professor of philosophy at Princeton University, told the crowd that ongoing police violence against minorities demands a response by a broad coalition, even if he, as a “revolutionary Christian,” has differences in opinion with the communists.
“Don’t confuse a jazz orchestra with a military band,” West said. “In a military band everybody’s got to hit the note in the same way at the same time. I come from a jazz people. Everybody has to raise their own voice.”
He likened the #BlackLivesMatter movement to other struggles against oppression worldwide. “Black faces in high places,” such as President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, have not brought a substantive difference in police accountability, he added.
Other marchers said that more white people should support the movement, especially by acknowledging that their societal status precludes them from experiencing the same type of treatment by police as minorities. The march amplified the activists’ need to increase their ranks while also demonstrating their intention to continue pressing for police and social reforms that would ensure a more equitable society, according to Charlie Mannings.
The Chelsea resident said that he has been a regular participant in the movement in the last four months. The continued involvement of young people — including a contingent of about 100 students from Bard High School Early College, on E. Houston St., at the march — is particularly encouraging, he added.
“We can resolve this immediately,” he said, “or we can just drag it on and on and on, but ultimately there will be changes.”
In that vein, following Scott’s shooting in South Carolina — where a videotape showed that the officer shot the fleeing man in the back multiple times — former New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly conceded that the time has now come for all police officers to wear body cameras.
