New York City- While the country has it’s attention focused on Ferguson, Mo in the wake of the Grand Jury decision to not indict officer Darren Wilson, people in cities all across America took to the streets in solidarity with the protesters in Ferguson.
In New York City, those protests have still not ended.
On Monday night, people began trickling into Union Square at the end of the day in anticipation of the Grand Jury decision. By 8:00pm a few dozen people had become more than a thousand. When word of the decision began to filter out on social media, the gathered people observed a four and a half-minute moment of silence at the request of the Brown family in remembrance of the 4.5 hours that Michael Brown’s body was left in the street after his death.
After the moment of silence, protesters began streaming out of Union Square and invaded every part of New York City by marching through downtown, midtown, and eventually uptown through Harlem. Eventually, the mass of protesters split into numerous groups and shut down both the Triborough Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge at the same time, completely halting all eastbound traffic into Manhattan. The NYPD showed an amazing amount of restraint allowing the protesters to halt traffic as they marched in the streets. As the protests ended around 2:00am a final group of protesters traveled back to Times Square to camp out for the daily broadcast of the “Today Show” and had to be removed as the broadcast began at 7:00am.
On Tuesday night the protesters returned with thousands more than the previous evening and picked up where they left off by crippling rush hour traffic. The groups shut down the Lincoln Tunnel, West Side Highway, and the FDR Expressway by splitting into multiple groups and forcing thousands of members of the NYPD to split up and chase them all night.
While Wednesday brought a needed reprieve for members of law enforcement and protesters, it was merely the calm before the storm as the next day saw an escalation of police violence towards protesters who participated in scattered “flash mob” protests that continued to interfere with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade all morning.
On Black Friday, protesters once again converged in Manhattan as part of a national day of action dubbed #BlackOutBlackFriday. Thousands came together, this time in Herald Square outside the Macy’s department store. Protesters filled the entire area and even entered Macy’s with signs chanting “Hands up don’t shop!”
The protesters then marched to Times Square where the NYPD began to violently arrest them for jaywalking, even tackling protesters and wrestling them to the ground in pedestrian areas. Eventually, they marched downtown towards Union Square followed by hundreds of police officers and dozens of police vehicles further disrupting traffic during rush hour.
After a week of upheaval, New York City is now preparing for another round of protests scheduled to begin on Monday with a city-wide student led walk-out. With recent leaks indicating that a Grand Jury decision is expected in the next week regarding the murder of Staten Island resident Eric Garner by another NYPD officer, these protests are only expected to grow in size and frequency.
