Plague Journal, Day 80: “Be prepared to escalate"

The first action I read about Sunday says it’s “family friendly,” scheduled for Grand Army Plaza, at Prospect Park’s north end, at 5 p.m. A post from a different organizing committee sets a Barclays Center action for 7 p.m. 

“Everybody knows it’s about to explode,” this one reads. “Here we face the brutality of the largest police force in the world. But night after night, we’ve shown up and fought as hard as we can. Let’s keep the momentum going. For George Floyd, Eric Garner, and all victims of police brutality. Come with a mask. Wear black. Be prepared to escalate.”  

That sounds the dangerous note I’ve felt in the air the past two nights, Friday and Saturday. But when I arrive on my bike at the Barclays Center plaza, around 7:15 p.m., the tone is different. 

For starters, perhaps 500 protesters have gathered, less than half as many as Friday night. I wonder if the action here has been called as a diversionary tactic, to distract police attention. (Dozens of officers stand at the plaza edges, many fewer than Friday night; I see no buses to transport arrestees.) Could organizers be using social media with that level of sophistication? Is protest momentum simply fading? 

Also, I note, rather than leaders standing with their backs to the arena, tonight they’ve formed two semicircles facing each other in the plaza center, each taking turns leading call-and-response chants. As on Friday the crowd is almost all under 40, about 60 percent white, almost all wearing black, masked. As more walk up to join, they form orderly arcs on each side of the semicircle. 

I decide to ride south on Flatbush Avenue, up the hill toward Grand Army Plaza and the park, to see if the “family-friendly” protest is larger. Before I can hop on my bike, 25 bicycle-riding NYPD officers on bicycles wearing neon-green jerseys arrive, just ahead of what I see is a line of marchers more than two blocks long, heading northward down the Flatbush Avenue hill from the park. At first the bike cops form an L-shape that stops marchers from moving past the Barclays plaza. Then, on a commander’s signal, they open the L, form a single line down the middle of the avenue, separating southbound cars (moving, very slowly) from northbound marchers. 

The cops seems stern but less tense than I’ve seen the past two nights. 

“Can I ask a question,” I ask a young Asian-American officer. 

“Go ahead,” he says. 

“Any idea of their destination?” 

“None,” he says pleasantly. “They didn’t tell us.”

I’m not sure whether he means protest organizers or his commanders. Flatbush Avenue leads onto the Manhattan Bridge, about a mile-and-a-half north. “I’m guessing they’re heading to Manhattan?” 

He shrugs. 

“Peace,” I say.

Marchers, I notice, stream by in groups; I see at least two large clumps further south, waiting at different intersections, apparently for signals to advance. Vociferous chants, all anti-cop, are led by young men and women spread throughout the lines; many chanters direct screams to the bicycle cops lined up beside me. But the energy feels, while still potent, more benign. Add the folks on the plaza to the marchers and I’d say we have 5,000, maybe more: more than twice as big as Friday night. They seem ten times as organized. Who’s marshaling these forces? 

Before I hop on my bike protesters begin to exit the plaza, walking north, merging neatly behind the first clump. 

I ride south, past the boarded-up Shake Shack, a second clump of marchers, to the intersection of Flatbush and Bergen, where the largest clump has stopped not far from the 78th Precinct building; police have maintained barricades at Flatbush, Bergen, Dean, and Sixth Avenue to protect it. Protestors show no interest in breaching barricades, but they’re directing chants at what I take to be the line of cops defending it. 

“Let him go! Let him go!” they shout. 

I can’t get close enough to see; the intersection is packed. I ask a couple of people if someone’s been arrested; no one near me knows. A young white woman with pink hair, black jeans, black T-shirt, directs cars to turn west on Bergen. “Coming through!” she screams at heedless marchers. 

I find a spot on the sidewalk on the avenue’s west side, across from the Doughnut Plant. The crowd (more than 1,000, I guess) fills the avenue, up past the Sixth Avenue and St. Marks intersections. Chanting is continuous: “Hands up, don’t shoot!” “Say his name!” “George Floyd!” “Say her name!” “Breonna Taylor!” The mood seems more somber than angry. 

I walk my bike past Bleachers, a bar where my Brooklyn Baseball Friend and I watched the World Series last October; they’re serving to-go drinks, but I see no takers. As I reach St. Marks Avenue I look back: on command, all protestors take a knee, then lie on the street, begin a low, slow chant: “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” The only two people on the avenue I see not lying down sit in wheelchairs. Further north, sun glints off tops of the downtown Brooklyn apartment towers. Dusk nears. I climb on my bike, ride into what turns out be a deserted Grand Army Plaza, ride on to The Girlfriend’s. (Her older child and partner left Saturday night for San Francisco; her son has moved back to his original room, The Girlfriend back to hers.)  

None of this will make the news, I realize. This is daylight protesting. The action that will make headlines — the phalanx charging, baton swinging, pepper spraying; the property destroying, fire setting, looting — will come after nightfall, when I’m in bed. 

Still, I’m heartened, maybe more than I’ve been since the start of CoronaWorld. So many of us are disgusted by state violence, sickened by its racism. We’re scared of impending authoritarianism. (All the folks afraid of losing freedom by donning masks: aren’t they concerned about police militarization? Are they certain all these weapons will never be used against them?) We hunger for justice. 

What I witness Sunday evening isn’t anarchy. It’s not nihilism. It’s protest, speech, politics: it’s order, yearning for creation of a more just order.