Friday, June 05, 2020

smothering the fire of people's anger

All 302.6 square miles of the City of New York are currently subject to a nighttime curfew. The curfew started Monday night at 11 pm, announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio. On Tuesday, the Mayor expanded it to 8 pm and extended it for the entire week. So, through the morning of June 8th, all 8.4 million New Yorkers will potentially be subject to ticketing and possible arrest if they venture out between 8 pm and 5 am. The police -- as the many viral videos of them using pepper spray, batons, and even squad cars to drive people off the streets show -- have been using the curfew as a weapon against people protesting police brutality.

Many of the initial news reports have attempted to normalize the curfew, presenting it as unusual but not unprecedented. Here's The New York Times of June 2, 2020:

The last time New York City was under curfew was in February 1945. Fiorello H. La Guardia was mayor. Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The Allied forces had just bombed Dresden, Germany, and the United States was facing a coal shortage. The director of war mobilization imposed a nationwide midnight curfew on all “places of entertainment.” It lasted until May.

But let's be honest: what went on in 1945 wasn't a curfew. It was a law that forced nightclubs to turn off their lights at midnight. People were still allowed on the streets.

For here's the sad truth that no one seems to want to acknowledge: this is the first full-city curfew in New York City's history.

There was no curfew imposed on the city during the draft riots in 1863, when anti-black mobs killed 120 people. There was no curfew after Malcolm X was gunned down in 1965, no curfew after Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. The was no curfew during the 1977 blackout and no curfew after the Tompkins Square Park Riots in 1988, when Mayor Edward I Koch tried to close the park at one in the morning (yes: not so long ago, you could relax in the city's parks at night, but today we have a permanent curfew and it's a crime to be in any park after 1 am, according to parks department rules.) Significantly, Koch left the streets open and protestors were free to move around the streets all night long. Despite this, the pushback was so strong that the famously strong-willed Mayor rescinded his attempt to close the park the following day.

There was no curfew in 1991 after Rodney King was beaten in LA and no curfew that same year after seven-year-old Gavin Cato was killed by a car in the motorcade of the Lubavicher Rebbe, which led to three days of violent contention in Crown Heights. There was no curfew in 1999 after police killed Amadou Diallo in the Bronx, and none after Patrick Dorismond was shot for no reason by an undercover officer. There was no curfew after Sean Bell was blown away on his wedding day in 2006, no curfew in 2014 when the cops choked Eric Garner to death and shot Michael Brown on the street in Ferguson and Akai Gurley in a housing project stairwell.

In fact, in my search of newspaper and city archives, I could only find one time a curfew had been imposed in New York 77 years ago -- and it was partial, neighborhood-based, and very short: Mayor La Guardia shut Harlem down in August 1943 after a cop shot and injured a black member of the U.S. Armed Forces who intervened in an arrest on 126th Street. The street protests that burst out after that incident of police brutality left six people dead. Yet, even with the deaths, La Guardia tried to keep the curfew proportional. It began at 10:30 pm, impacted just one community, and lasted just two days.

The word curfew comes from the French -- covrir (to cover) feu (fire). And we've returned to that root today. Cuomo and de Blasio, who both claim to be progressive, have given the NYPD a handy tool to kick dirt on the fire of people's righteous and non-violent anger.

Tuesday, June 02, 2020

A message to America’s mayors, governors, city managers, local officials, police chiefs


You had one job -- to protect and defend your people -- and you failed.

It should go without saying: Do not kill your people. Do not put your knee on the neck of your people or tackle them and put them in a chokehold. Do not shoot them in their cars or break down their doors as if you were leading a violent home invasion or pull the trigger on them when they’re playing cops and robbers with a toy gun in the park. Do not attack your people. Do not squirt chemical mace or pepper spray in your people’s faces. Do not drive your cars into your people as they are exercising their First Amendment rights. Do not club your people with nightsticks. Do not shoot your people when they congregate to demonstrate, even if your guns are only loaded with rubber bullets. Do not fire tracer rounds at your people. Do not arrest reporters and medics: whatever you think of the jobs they do or the views they hold or what they write about you: they are your people, too.

You have done all these things – and thus proved the anger of your people to be righteous.

The only question now is how you will make amends.

The answer is basic – and like many basic things, it’s not particularly hard but it does take courage.

You have to meet with people you disagree with. You have to sit down with many who have organized the protests or been the victims of your policies. You have to listen. You have to hear their anger. You have to accept that their anger is directed at you, personally. And then, working jointly, respecting and understanding that rage, you have to spend the time to come up with concrete steps for the future – a plan of action that you will announce together.

It is likely that this process will take you far out of your comfort zone. The people you meet may hold views you consider radical. They may be former residents of your jails. They may speak differently than you do. But you have to seek them out and break bread with them. You have to drill down into your community. If the flyers or texts about demonstrations were sent out by groups you don’t know, have your staffers find out who these people are and go talk with them. If you have no way of finding out who they are, you do not deserve to be leading your cities.

And remember: this is bigger than politics. Some of your constituents will no doubt disparage you and will claim that you surrendered to violence. The guy in the White House, for sure, will flame you. Pay no attention to their derision. This is not about your image or your polling data or your projection of strength or your victory in the next election. It’s about a fundamental principle of governance that you have been neglecting. In this country, government reflects the will and consent of the governed and, at this moment, the governed have made it amply clear: they never gave their consent to these things you have done.

Also: stop blaming others. It’s time for you to shoulder your burden. You’re in charge. When you ran, when you took the oath of office, all the old problems became yours. In fact, you probably started in politics by asserting you could fix these things.

It’s also disingenuous for you to blame the current unrest on outsiders. People visit your cities all the time. When they are in your house, they are your people too.

Know, too, your rank and file cops are scared of many of your people and treat the very people they have sworn to protect and defend as less than human. It's time for you to take responsibility. If you cops kill or maim or mistreat someone -- whether with a knee, a chokehold, a baton, a toilet bowl plunger, or a bullet, or simply by accosting them for no reason other than the color of their skin -- it is as if you have killed or maimed or accosted someone, for they are all your cops, under your command and control. You need to take responsbility. When your cops have done wrong, you have done wrong, and it is your job to hold yourself accountable and make amends by fighting for serious, lasting change so that these things can never happen again. If you can't do this, you are in the wrong job.

This is not rocket science. It is common sense. What is needed right now is for you to get out into the community, to listen to the people whose voices have not been heard, whose voices you have hitherto not respected, and then work with them to create the lasting solutions that will ensure these deaths and injuries will never happen again. Then, and only then, people will get out of the streets.

This is the moment. Seize it and make the change you know is needed.