Thursday night. I hustle to make dinner — kale pasta, one of The Kid’s favorites, though she eats it without the greens (spinach & arugula) that I put on separately for The Girlfriend and me.
“I still think it’s weird this dish is named after an ingredient you never use,” The Girlfriend says.
“History,” I say. “I used to use kale, until I decided I liked other greens better. The Kid’s never liked any of them, so she gets other veg options.”
The Kid has homework — her school doesn’t end for two weeks, but teachers’ grades are due tomorrow, so she has a few deadlines. The Girlfriend and I hop in her car, drive to St. John’s and Franklin, park about 25 minutes after the 7 p.m. start of a march. Usually demonstrations start late, but now the crowd is gone.
We head to Eastern Parkway, ask a few people — someone points west, the majority point east. We walk fast, but the marchers seem to have moved fast themselves.
“Maybe this will be like the first night or two, when we could never catch up to the marchers," I say.
“At the least, it’s a nice walk on a beautiful night,” The Girlfriend says.
We walk eight long blocks into Crown Heights, think about giving up; then she spots police lights on Troy. We turn north, catch up to a group of maybe 2,500, walk past the trailing cops, join the group taking a knee in the middle of the street. We rise, march on.
At every demonstration dozens of volunteers hand out water bottles, masks, hand sanitizer; others in the front stand together to block intersections, direct traffic. The mood is uniformly cheerful, with chants breaking out up and down the lines. Chant leaders appear at random; by now we know how to follow.
“Say her name.” “Breanna Taylor!” “Say his name.” “George Floyd!”
“What do we want?” “Justice!” “When do we went it?” “Now!” “If we don’t get it …” “Shut it down!”
Marchers bend east on Bergen for two blocks, to the 77th Precinct building on Utica, where we turn back north. As we near the precinct a woman leads a chant new to me: “You ‘bout to lose your job!” As we make the turn, watched by a dozen cops on the precinct roof, dozens more lining the sidewalks and streets, the chant morphs: “Quit your job! Quit your job!” Hundreds of fingers point at impassive faces.
At Atlantic Avenue, a divided six-lane thoroughfare, we turn west. Atlantic’s one of those roads where tourists arriving from JFK might think, “How can people live in this city?” Among scattered shoddy apartment buildings, storage units, and a surprising number of crummy hotels sit strip malls filled with — well, here’s one on the corner of Schenectady: Dollar Tree; Dunkin’ Donuts; rent-to-own furniture; two beauty supply shops; small pharmacy; Golden Krust (pizza and Caribbean food); check cashing store; pawnbroker.
We’ve stopped three lanes of eastbound traffic, now backed up for blocks. There must be angry drivers, but almost everyone we see has windows rolled down, fists pumping, horns honking, music blaring, joining in the chants: “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!” As we walk further west apartment buildings get taller, if not much nicer; on several, residents shine phone lights from the roofs, chant with us.
We turn south on Bedford, pass the U.S. Grant Statue, turn west on Bergen. We’ve walked for two hours; The Kid texts to see when we’ll be home. Ten minutes, I say. We break away, find the car, drive home.
Friday. The Co-Parent arrives at 2 p.m. to pick up The Kid. She’d prefer to stay in one house until after 5 p.m., when her after-school writing class ends, but last week I got caught in terrible evening traffic; when I see there’ll be a half-dozen Brooklyn protests between 4 and 6 p.m., I convince her to leave early.
It’s another gorgeous late spring night. The Girlfriend and I agree to meet at Grand Army Plaza for the 6 p.m. bicycle demonstration. She arrives in the back of a pack extending well into the park; I arrive at the back of a pack at the plaza’s southwestern edge. We text, figure a place to meet, jimmy our way through thousands of bicyclists — maybe 5,000? — extending onto Flatbush, Union, Prospect Park West. Around 6:30, we push off, east onto Eastern Parkway.
We ride for two hours, through neighborhoods new to me: along Eastern Parkway as it bends northeast, behind the eastern part of Crown Heights known as Weeksville; northwest at the Evergreen Cemetery, on Bushwick Avenue for 10 blocks; then northeast on Decatur Street, through the eastern part of Bushwick (working class whites, blacks, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans); northwest on Fresh Pond Road into Queens (Ridgewood, Fresh Pond); then west on Metropolitan, over the Newtown Creek and back to Brooklyn (East Williamsburg); southwest on Graham, into Williamsburg.
These actions have no permits; cops aren’t setting out barricades, directing traffic. Six or eight volunteers ride ahead, line up three or four per intersection to block cross traffic; six or eight more speed ahead to the next intersection. Occasionally some shout instructions: “Tighten up! Speed it up! Don’t let them separate you!” If anyone has radios, I don’t see them. The ride extends for a well over a mile, maybe two, spreading out on multi-lane avenues, bunching up on narrow streets. More volunteers hand out water, hand sanitizer, masks; I see three impromptu sidewalk stations where riders repair flat tires.
Thousands of people cheer us on the streets, many using phones to film us: Who doesn’t love a parade? What affects me most are the number of people so clearly moved by our presence, many older African-Americans:
The gray-haired man, skinny as a straw, standing on a lamp post, hugging it with one hand while pumping his other fist: “What do want? When do we want it?”
The woman who looks dressed for church, purple blouse, sunglasses, holding her arms open: “Bless you! Bless you!”
The stooped man, eyes red-rimmed, stepping down Eastern Parkway near Broadway Junction, camera in one raised hand, yelling, “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!”
The woman in Williamsburg who says, amazed, “There are a million of you! And a march just came through, and there were a million of them!”
A few minutes later we ride south on Union Avenue, in the heart of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. It’s about 8:20 p.m., the sun near setting. An Orthodox man, black hat, black coat, stands in an intersection, arms spread wide: “You have to stop! You have to stop! It’s almost sunset! You have to let the cars through!” We’ve passed by the time I process what he means: many of his peers must be in cars, which religious law forbids them to drive after sunset on a Friday night. His anxiety stays with me, a lone sour note.
Under the Bronx-Queens Expressway, as Williamsburg Street West turns west into Park Avenue, we call it a night, ride south on Clinton Avenue. We’re hungry. On DeKalb, our favorite Indian restaurant has set out four sidewalk tables. The server has set up tables with drinks to block the restaurant entrance; he makes clear he can’t serve us tableside, just hand us our food. We order dinner, cocktails (mint lemonade with gin for her, with mezcal for me; we swear this place had no liquor license Before CoronaWorld). We sit in the twilight, pull down our masks, enjoy the soft breezes, await curry and dosas we’ll eat from to-go boxes with plastic utensils.
For the first time in three months, it feels like the New York City we love.
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