Thought I would post a follow-up to yesterday's post, A silent march for justice.
The weather was perfect for the march, and thousands of people from all walks of life responded to the call to come out on Father's Day to protest NYC Mayor Bloomberg's draconian "Stop and Frisk" policies.
Not a lot of video has been posted yet, but I did find these:
NYC Council Member Jumaane D. Williams marched with thousands of New Yorkers on Fathers Day, March 17, 2012 to silently protest Stop & Frisk policies in New York City.
Also seen in the video are Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous, and union members in orange construction vests.
Harlem activist and founder of "All Things Harlem" Joseph Jazz Hayden interviews New York City Comptroller John Liu during the march. Liu is running for NYC mayor-2013. Liu said "this is what you expect to read about a totalitarian state-not the city of New York, and add to that the fact that almost everybody is a person of color. This is racial profiling."
Press coverage was national and local.
The NY Times:
Thousands March Silently to Protest Stop-and-Frisk Policies
Demonstrators mostly adhered to the organizers’ call to march in silence, hushing talkers along the route. Members of labor unions and the N.A.A.C.P. appeared to predominate, but there were also student groups, Occupy Wall Street, Common Cause, the Universal Zulu Nation and the Answer Coalition. A group of Quakers carried a banner criticizing the stop-and-frisk practice; other signs read, “Skin Color Is Not Reasonable Suspicion” and “Stop & Frisk: The New Jim Crow.”
As of Friday, 299 organizations had endorsed the march, including unions, religious groups and Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arab, and Jewish groups. The turnout reflected the growing alliance between civil rights groups and gay and lesbian activists, who in past years have often kept each other at arm’s length. Last month, the board of the N.A.A.C.P., which includes several church leaders, voted to endorse same-sex marriage. The roster of support for the march on Sunday included at least 28 gay, lesbian and transgender groups.
Chris Bilal, 24, who is black and gay, said he had been stopped three times, the last time while dancing with two friends in Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. “Sometimes I’m targeted as a drug dealer, sometimes as someone interfering with the quality of life, sometimes as a gay African-American man in a place I don’t belong,” he said. The idea for the demonstration took root three months ago in Selma, Ala., after a commemoration of the 1965 civil rights march there, said Benjamin Todd Jealous, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., who met there with the Rev. Al Sharpton and George Gresham, president of 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East.
Washington Post:
Civil rights, gay activists march to NYC mayor’s home, demand end to stop-and-frisk policing
CNN
Thousands march in silence against NYPD's 'Stop and Frisk'
LA Times
New Yorkers hold silent march to protest 'stop-and-frisk' policy
They weren’t there to make noise. Exactly the opposite.
Thousands of protesters took to New York streets in a silent march on Sunday afternoon to protest the preemptive NYPD "stop-and-frisk" policy that snared more than 600,000 people last year and, critics say, disproportionately targeted minorities.
The silent marchers traveled from Harlem to Fifth Avenue in Manhattan hardly saying a word, borrowing a tactic first used by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in 1917 to protest lynching and race riots, organizers said.
Yet while the NAACP was involved in this march — Al Sharpton was too — 298 other groups participated, organizers said, including Arab American and Muslim groups, Jewish groups, LGBT groups, Korean groups and unions. "In most cities, when you ask who gets beaten up by the cops, the answer comes back: black people, people of color, and the gay community," NAACP head Benjamin Jealous said in a TV interview, according to the Associated Press.
Unfortunately this was the headline from the Guardian:
Stop and frisk protesters in New York march on mayor's house:
Demonstration opposing police programme many believe victimises ethnic minorities ends with arrests and violence
The Guardian wasn't the only publication to mention the handful of folks who marred the silence by deciding to ignore the coalition's rules for peaceful silent protest. Thankfully, those few who decided to break ranks did so at the end. Unfortunately those who did were linked in the press as members of the Occupy movement. Unfair to Occupy, and to the thousands who came out in good faith and in the spirit of peaceful protest.
Mayor Bloomberg made an effort to defend his policies by going into a black church in Brownsville to preach his gospel of "crime prevention".
Stop-and-Frisk Policy ‘Saves Lives,’ Mayor Tells Black Congregation
As criticism of the Police Department’s so-called stop-and-frisk policy grows louder, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took to the pulpit before a black congregation in Brooklyn on Sunday to make his most forceful and nuanced defense of the practice yet, arguing that it had helped make New York the safest big city in the country, while acknowledging that the police needed to treat those whom they stopped with greater respect. “We are not going to walk away from a strategy that we know saves lives,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “At the same time, we owe it to New Yorkers to ensure that stops are properly conducted and carried out in a respectful way.”
Um...
NO Mister Mayor.
Stopping hundreds of thousands of people going about their business can never be "respectful".
Just suppose it was done on Wall Street daily, targeting dudes in suits with briefcases. "Excuse me sir...you are a white male in a business suit...do you mind stepping over here, spreading your legs so we can see if you have a gun?" Bloomberg would be impeached in a week.
Getting hauled over to a police car, or put up against a wall to be touched, frisked, harassed-in many cases not "politely"; living with the fear of walking, shopping, standing outside your apartment building or sitting on a stoop, or driving while being black, latino, asian, native american, muslim, or LBGT is not, and cannot ever be acceptable.
Thousands of people marched to silently testify to that.
We have to keep up the pressure on these policies-not just in NYC, but wherever they are being implemented across the US.
FYI:
The End Racial Profiling Act. Introduced in 2011 by Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the bill would mandate police training on racial profiling, require record keeping about whom authorities stop and, ultimately, lead to the loss of federal funding if state and local governments don't adopt policies to stop racial profiling.